Aurora
by AhsokaTano
Summary: For every star, a story there is. The same goes for planets, even those no one's ever heard of before. Perhaps those are the ones with the most important stories. Anakin/Ahsoka, CW Era. *Temporary hiatus; see author's note*
1. Prologue

Okay. I suppose this is a slightly AU fic… maybe. It's honestly something I just sort of… dreamed up. Literally, actually. XD But, all three of my 'story-screeners' have insisted that it is totally awesome and that I have to post it, despite my arguments that it's rather not my best work. But, hey, what do I know, and if nothing else it is proving very fun to write – so here you go. Like the summary suggests, it is Clone Wars Era, and will be Anakin/Ahsoka (side note to : add Ahsoka to the character list! She's cannon now!). The rest I suppose you'll have to find out for yourself! So… read, enjoy, and please review, because since I'm still not sure if this is any good, reviews WILL effect if I continue posting it or not.

**Prologue**

Panic. Panic and pain. Metal and pressure and blood and darkness and patches of light. And _pain_. And… someone was missing. No… no, he couldn't be gone. He had to be here. He'd said he wouldn't leave her. _Master…_ she had no voice. And even if she had, who could hear it? She was buried in metal. There was no space, no room… She had to get out.

She pushed and kicked and fought, and she was stuck and something was digging into her side and it flaming _hurt_ but none of that mattered, because she had to find him, and she couldn't find him stuck in here. She could sense an opening to her left; a hole, an escape. She grabbed hold of a piece of bent hull above and beside her and pulled, and she swore she _felt_ something tear, and then she was loose and the metal she held was shifting and sliding and now she was falling, tumbling down the side of the pod and landing in a painful, tangled heap on the hard dirt and crisp yellowed grass. She looked down at herself. She was covered in blood. Her _own_ blood. A wave of nausea washed over her and her head swam, and some distant, hazy part of her brain thought, _Oh, that can't be good._ And for a while, darkness flooded her mind, and she didn't think anything else.

The moments of nothingness seemed to end all too soon. What had awoken her? Sounds… voices? It didn't matter. She forced herself to take deep breaths. Everything hurt. How long had she been out? She had to find him. Where was he? Had… had he come with her? She was hurt… was he hurt? Where… couldn't she… she should be able to… she reached out, trying to sense him, trying to call to him, but there was nothing. She couldn't focus. She couldn't concentrate… and there was _nothing_. No. _Focus!_

There were voices. Whose voices? Not metallic. Humanoid. But she didn't hear him. They weren't droids, and they weren't him… so the voices weren't important. She fought with her unwilling body; she had to get up. Frag the pain, she had to get up. The blood… was that all her blood? It didn't matter. But she was shaking, and her arms wouldn't hold her up, and her legs wouldn't even _move_, and she fell back into the prickly yellow grass. And the voices were getting louder, closer.

"I don't know, I've never seen anything like… oh, my stars. Manny… _Manny!_ Get over here!" _Shut up,_ she pleaded silently, _I have to focus!_ Only through focus, only through concentration… she would find him, she had to, she had to reach him, he was somewhere… but all she was finding was emptiness. "Oh my stars… I don't believe this…" There had to be more than just emptiness. "Manny… is it…" "I don't know…" Why wouldn't they be quiet for just a frakking minute and let her focus? "Don't touch it, Kei!" But there was a light pressure on her shoulder anyway; she was being rolled onto her side. "By the Holy Stars…" She couldn't find him. But she could always find him… unless… "Kei, get back, it could hurt you!" He was… he was gone. No. _No! _And such a fierce pain shot through her chest she could swear someone had grabbed hold of her heart and was twisting it, crushing it. It was worse than all the other pain; an agony she couldn't just hold in. Her cry would join the voices. "No!"

The touch disappeared from her shoulder; a male voice swore, a female cried out. "Dear Light, it's still alive!" and the touch came back. "Oh, dear, you poor thing…"

"Kei, get away from it, you don't know what it is!"

"No, no, Master… no, where are you…" Was she whispering? Was she even talking out loud? There was wetness on her face… tears? Or just more blood? She had to find him, had to get up… but she couldn't.

"Hush now, dear, it's alright… hold still…"

But it was anything but alright. "No, I have… h-have to… f-find my Master…" but her voice was so small she didn't know if it could be heard, and she felt so lost, and her heart was still twisting, and everything was slowly fading. But the voices still continued.

"Kei, I said get away from it!"

"No, Manny, we can't just leave her here, she'll die…"

"It's dyin' anyway, look at it!"

"Shush, Manny, she's scared enough already! Oh, she's so small… I think she's just a child! …It's alright, little one, we're going to help you. Just hold on." And there were arms beneath her, and the feeling of being lifted; she moaned softly, it hurt to be moved.

"We're what?! Kei, put it down, we should walk away… this is weird stuff, we don't want to get involved." But the male voice no longer sounded so certain, so demanding.

"I am _not_ leaving her here to die, Manny, and I know you won't either, whatever you say; now come on, we have to get her to the house." She felt herself shifted in the arms that held her, and a vague awareness of movement. The last of her strength faded away. The final thought in her mind became the last words on her lips, a frightened whimper.

"Master Skywalker…" and everything slipped away into darkness.


	2. Chapter 1

Well, apparently it's at least somewhat good, 'cause people asked for more. :D So, here you go with chapter one. Hopefully it'll remain good; I'd hate to disappoint. Please keep the reviews coming; this one's fun and I'd hate to give in to writer's block on it – the bane of every writer's existence, please someone Force-choke it for me. XD Anyways, enjoy!

**Chapter One**

Consciousness was slow in returning. She was a bit glad for that – consciousness hurt. Her side ached, her head throbbed, her leg was searing agony, and there were sharp – but graciously short – jolts of pain shooting through her stomach every few seconds. But, as awareness and feeling flooded back in, none of that compared to the empty, aching void in her chest; that anguish she could not place and could not name but that was worse than anything else that this wakening could throw at her.

She forced her pain to the back of her mind as best she could – _focus, come on, girl, focus_ – and tried to figure out exactly what was going on. She was… on a mattress… wrapped in a soft quilt… something warm and – furry? – was beside her... purring? She tried to open her eyes, turn her head to look; even the tiny movement shot daggers through her aching body, and she groaned softly. The purring increased and the furry thing shifted; it was nuzzling her. But something else was returning, with awareness and pain; fear that threatened to become outright panic, and a sense of urgency she couldn't define – the feeling that she had to go somewhere, or do something, and that it was very important. She struggled to sit up before she'd even managed to fully open her eyes, the pain intensifying horribly at the movements. There was a voice, quiet and gentle, and then a cool hand on her forehead pushing her carefully back down. A soft, frightened whimper escaped her lips; she was a bit embarrassed by the sound, for some reason she couldn't place. The voice came again, unfamiliar but gentle and soothing.

"Hush, child, relax… it's alright, you're safe. Stay still. No more fear, now… no one's going to hurt you." Her half-opened eyes picked out the blurry form above her – a human… a female… dark hair, light eyes; she couldn't tell anything more. The immediate panic was fading with the words, allowing thought to return. Why was she scared? What was wrong? What was it she needed to… the ghost of a memory struck her like a physical blow; a name, someone, someone who was very important.

"M-master… Master Skywalker…" Her voice was weak, ragged, and raspy; she was suddenly made aware that her mouth and throat were very dry. A hand slipped behind her head, and she was lifted slowly, carefully; a cup was held to her lips, and she was given a gentle order to drink. She didn't have the strength to argue at all. The initial feeling of cool water on her dry throat made her cough a bit, but she recovered quickly. The water was beautifully refreshing; she could feel strength returning with each swallow. She quickly emptied the cup.

"There we go. That's better, isn't it?" The human's tone, as if she were talking to a very young child, might have annoyed her in any other situation – though she wasn't quite sure why – but right now, she couldn't bring herself to care. She was laid carefully back against the pillows, and here was that furry, purring thing again – a feline-like creature, grey-and-white with blue eyes, two tails, and three pairs of legs – nuzzling her softly and settling down with its head on her shoulder. Friendly thing. She blinked at it. The human was talking again. "Good to see you finally awake, dear; you had us worried there, for a couple days, you know. Manarin thought you weren't going to pull through. But, I told him, we can't go giving up on you, you seemed a strong little thing, to have lasted as long as you did…" Blue-grey eyes followed the human as she bustled around, straightening a pillow here, tucking in a sheet there, until a hand came to rest on her forehead once again. "Still a bit of a fever – I think – but it's not as bad as it was yesterday. Hopefully you're on the mend."

"Who… who're you?" she managed, the moment she was able to sneak a word in edge-wise. It might not have been the most polite question, but the woman wasn't striking any chords in her memory – not much was, she had to grudgingly admit – and she thought she might feel a bit less lost if she had a name to put to face.

"Oh, of course, where are my manners? I'm Keida. My husband Manarin and I found you about four days ago, out on the plains, near a bunch of metal wreckage. We assumed you were in some sort of crash… you're pretty beat up, little one. Of course, we brought you back here to our homestead in the hopes we could help you."

She blinked slowly, trying to process this. _Plains? Crash?_ It was unnerving that she couldn't recall anything of the sort… a fact that became increasingly frightening as she realized, bit-by-bit, that she couldn't recall much of _anything_. Why was her mind so hazy? She'd never felt like this before. "Four days?" It was the only thing she could grasp well enough to ask about – four days was too long. _Too long for what?_

"Yes, about that, now. Like I said, you were – well, are – pretty badly hurt. You've been unconscious most of the time. This is the first time you've been awake and coherent, and it is a relief, dear, let me tell you. That hunk of metal you were in took quite a beating… must have been a long fall?" Keida eyed her for a moment, but when she had no answer, continued. "Never seen anything quite like it. From the looks of it, though, it's a miracle you survived… I'm glad we found you when we did." Despite her friendly, conversational tone, Keida was nervous and on-edge, she could feel it – she wasn't sure how she could tell, but she could. It made her feel worried and a little suspicious, like… like there was something she wasn't being told; something else going on here that she didn't know about. But, her mind felt so hazy, so unfocussed… maybe she was just imagining it all, being paranoid… "Do you have a name, dear?" Keida's question pulled her out of her musings. And proceeded to effectively spur her into new ones.

"Uh…" Name. Sure, she had a name. Everyone had a name. It would be ridiculous for her _not_ to have a name. So… what the brix was her blinking name? Keida was looking at her with an odd expression of expectation and concern. "Well… I…" Come on, she had to have a name. She wracked her mind trying to pull up some memory that would answer this simple question. _Oh, yeah? And what is __**that**_ _supposed to mean, Snips?_ The voice sounded in her head, amused and a bit teasing. Snips? Was that her name? No… something in her said it wasn't, no matter how right it sounded. Beyond that, she felt it was something special, something… private, she supposed, something too sacred for this unfamiliar woman to call her by. So that wouldn't do. She tried to pull up something different, call on that same voice again. When she got it to repeat in her head again, it was no longer teasing, but urgent, frantic. _I __**said**__ get in the pod, Ahsoka! Now! That's an order! _It shot a new jolt of fear through her, that urgent tone, but it also gave the answer to the question. "Ahsoka," she responded, aware that the pause had been unusually long for such an easy question. "My… my name's Ahsoka Tano."

Keida nodded. "Ahsoka," she repeated, as if testing the word. "Alright. Well… excuse me for being frank, Ahsoka…" _Who's 'Frank'? _Ahsoka wondered vaguely, "no offense meant, of course, but… _what_ are you?"

This question surprised her. "I'm a Togruta, of course!" she responded with hardly a thought – it would occur to her in a few moments that it was a bit odd that she'd remember that with more ease than she recalled her own name.

"Tuh-groo-ta?" Keida sounded out slowly. Ahsoka winced slightly at the slight marring of the word.

"Uh… c-close enough." The feline gave an amused 'mrow', and she lifted one arm to scratch behind its ears, trying to stop her hand from shaking. "Haven't… haven't you heard of us? We're from…" it took her a second or two to bring up the name of the planet; it was warring with the name 'Coruscant' in her head, though she knew that one was wrong. "Shili."

For a third time Keida repeated the word after her – as if it was something she'd never heard before – gazing thoughtfully off to the side. The feeling Ahsoka had of something being wrong here was getting stronger and stronger. She narrowed her eyes and made an attempt to sit up, but this shot such a jolt of pain through her side and stomach that she fell back with a little gasp, hand moving to clutch at her aching side. This snapped Keida out of her daze. "Oh dear, no, no, no, little one, stay still. Slow breaths, now… that's it." Before Ahsoka really knew what was happening the woman was sitting beside her on the bed, leaning worriedly over her, grasping her wrist lightly and trying to pull her hand away from her side. "Here, here, let me see…" Moments of examining bandages, then a small sigh of relief. "Good, good, no worries. I don't think you re-opened anything."

Despite such reassurances, Ahsoka lay perfectly still for a bit longer, eyes closed, waiting for the pain to fade. She was vaguely aware of the feline-thing, rudely unseated by her sudden movement but settling without grudge or prejudice back into its former position curled against her; the purr was comforting, and she was oddly glad for the creature's presence. "W-where am I?" She asked when she felt capable of speaking again.

"Well, we're a little farm, out on the Yellow Plains – guess you could kind of say we're one of those 'middle of nowhere' places, but we're only a couple hundred miles from…"

"No," Ahsoka interrupted, not concerned about politeness at the moment, "_where?_ What… what planet is this?" She eyed the human with a new suspicion as another question struck her; she didn't know the full meaning of it, but knew that the answer was important nonetheless. "Are y-you… Republic, Separatist, or neutral?"

Keida blinked at her, looking as if she'd just had a number of suspicions confirmed and wasn't quite sure what to do with them now. "Planet, dear? Well… this is Terrania. We're Terranean. I don't know what you mean, 'Republic' or 'Separatist'…"

"Are you w-with the droids?" Ahsoka demanded. Droids were bad. Droids were the enemy. She was certain of that much. Keida was looking more confused by the second – Ahsoka could relate.

"Droids? What… like robots? No, child, there are no… 'droids' here." Ahsoka could do little but believe her. She had no evidence to the contrary. Her head was whirling with this new information; she felt frightened again. She'd never heard of 'Terrania'. She could pull up the names of myriad planets in her mind – admittedly she had no memory of _how_ she knew so many, nor of what most of them meant to her – but she knew _of_ them, and she knew nothing of this place. Republic or Separatist? How did one 'not know'? She hardly remembered her own _name_ and she still knew she was staunchly on the Republic's side. Why was this so important? She wasn't sure, but she knew it _was_. Fear was squeezing her heart again, reminding her of that void, that pain, which brought the name back to her mind and she cursed herself for forgetting him for even a moment.

"Master Skywalker. Did you find him? W-was he… was he there?"

Keida shook her head slightly. "Who is this 'Skywalker'? Another… Togruta?"

Ahsoka shook her head in frustration. "He's my Master," she snapped irritably. "He's… he's a human like you… t-taller than me, adult… brown h-hair, blue eyes…" the more she talked the more she realized the question was pointless; if he were here, he'd be with her – she would sense him, she would feel his presence, it would be him sitting here with her and not this Keida person. He was the only thing she could clearly remember, and she knew in the depths of her heart he would not leave her alone like this, in this condition, if he could help it. She looked up at the woman with a mixture of hopelessness and pleading in her eyes. "_Please_," she begged, all irritation disappearing and leaving only painful desperation in her tone, "Was he there… is he here?"

Keida's eyes answered her before her words did. "I'm sorry, Ahsoka… we only found you. There was no one else there, not outside of that thing you landed here in." Ahsoka closed her eyes tightly, trying to fight the renewed twisting in her heart and the tears that threatened to accompany it. _No… nonononono, this can't be happening… he can't be gone…_ Keida's hand on her shoulder brought her partially back to reality, but she refused to open her eyes. "Are… were you… how is he your 'Master'? Are you a… slave, of some sort? A servant?"

Ahsoka shook her head. "No…" But even as she said it, she felt uncertain. "I don't think so… oh, stang, I don't know." A few tears escaped her eyes and she reached up to wipe them away. This was all too much at once. She was shaking again; she felt overwhelmed. There was a terrible pressure in her chest as more tears threatened, and it hurt to breathe this hard but she couldn't calm herself. Something in some corner of her mind kept telling her that she wasn't supposed to cry, so she kept swiping at the rebellious tears with the back of her hand. "I d-don't… know where I am and… I don't know wh-where he… is and I b-barely know… _who_ I am and… I don't know what's g-going on… I just don't _know_…" And her voice trailed off, sounding very small and very young, and she couldn't wipe the tears away fast enough to stop them falling.

"Oh, sweetie…" and Keida's arms were around her, lifting her carefully so that she was sitting up and holding her in a careful embrace. "It's alright… it'll be okay." Ahsoka just shook her head, burying her face against the woman's shoulder, shaking with quiet sobs. The feline nuzzled against her back and mewed in concern, and Keida tightened her arms around the trembling young girl. "I'll take care of you… we'll figure this out… everything's going to be alright." Ahsoka nestled against her and gave up on trying to stop the tears, and wished with all her heart that she could believe that.


	3. Chapter 2

Whoo, chapter two! …Stang, that rhymed, didn't it? Ugh. Oh, well. I've noticed my chapters are tending to be decently long in this story. It pleases me. Though I already anticipate chapter 3 will be comparatively rather short, but hey, they can't all be perfect. XD As a side note… YAY! The site listened to me! I sent in a suggestion for them to add Ahsoka to the character list, along with other Clone Wars people – Dooku, Rex, Ventress, Master Plo, Grievous – and today, they were all added! I feel accomplished. Yay for mine being the first story to list officially list Ahsoka as a character, as of 12:00 AM EST on October 13 when I noticed and added her on. :D Anyways, as usual, thanks for reading, and please review!

**Chapter Two**

Ahsoka had finally managed to cry herself out and, exhausted and aching, slip back off to sleep with the feline-thing – Keida called him Cerano – lying beside her. She'd drifted in and out of restless nightmares for a few hours, images of droids and spaceships and her Master and clones and flashes of color from blasters and sabers alike; things that muddled together in her mind, things she couldn't quite make sense of. Now she awoke with a whimper on her lips, roused again by voices, opening her eyes to find Cerano curled on her chest, nose-to-nose with her and purring. She moved one hand to stroke his soft fur while trying to make sense of what had penetrated her dreams – voices, yes, Keida and a man, outside the door to the room she was in. The house was small, she guessed, and her hearing was good; they were only a room away, and she didn't have to try to eavesdrop to manage it.

"What do you want me to do, Manny, we can't just turn her out now. She's hurt." Keida's voice, soft as ever. She had no doubt that it was her being discussed.

"We can't keep it here, either, Kei. Shouldn't have brought it here in the first place. Stars and galaxies, it's… it's an _alien_!" That was the man's voice now, and Ahsoka winced slightly at the tone, and the harsh word. That was insulting somehow, she knew that much, but she supposed she was in little position to be too badly offended.

"_She_ is a Togruta, and her name is Ahsoka," Keida said pointedly. "Maybe if you'd take the time to actually _look_ at her instead of just seeing 'the alien from the UFO crash'…"

"I've looked at her, Keida," the male voice – Manny? Or Manarin, Keida had said – responded. "She's red with… weird blue tentacle-horn things on her head," Ahsoka self-consciously lifted a hand to touch her head-tails – _They're not 'weird'… are they?_ – "and white markin's. Definitely not Terranean. What am I supposed to see but an alien?" There was a pause. "What the heck is a 'Togruta' anyway?"

"I assume a Togruta is a red-skinned humanoid with white markings and little striped horns and… tentacle things on their head," Keida replied coolly. "Much like the young member of the species who is recovering on the pullout in there." Another pause. "Don't look at me like that, Manny; you _did_ ask."

"Ha ha." She heard footsteps, like someone was pacing – too heavy for Keida; must be Manarin. "So… how is she, then? …Don't you grin at me like that, woman, I just want to know how soon we can get her out of here is all. I want my study back."

"One of these days you're going to finish growing that heart of yours, and then we're all going to be shocked." Keida sounded amused.

"Answer the question, Kei, before I decide I don't care."

Ahsoka heard Keida sigh slightly. "She's… better. I'm certainly no doctor…"

"Coulda fooled me."

"But, the fact that she awoke long enough to talk a bit is encouraging. I think she still has a slight fever, though – but, maybe her core temperature is just higher than ours, I've no way to know. She's still quite weak, though, and the poor dear's in a lot of pain…" It was odd to hear people talk about her like this, and she was struck with the sudden feeling that she was intruding on their privacy – after all, they didn't know she could hear them. She tried to block the voices out, taking advantage of the opportunity to assess her own condition herself.

Well, her head hurt, and her mind still felt… hazy, fuzzy. Like there was a cloud blurring her thoughts; something just seemed… off. It was an odd feeling – she assumed it would fade in time… hopefully. She moved her attention to other issues. Her side was aching, as was her stomach, and her chest hurt every time she tried to take a bit too deep of a breath. _Ugh, I'm a mess._ She tested all her limbs, making a mental checklist of what still worked. Left shoulder hurt – lingering ache, maybe she'd sprained it. Right arm was okay. All fingers were functional. Right leg was fine. Left leg… she barely managed to stifle a cry of pain, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes tightly; Cerano gave a concerned mew, and she shushed him, not wanting to make any noise yet to let them know she was awake. _Stang, that __**hurts**__… _She caught the last bit of what Keida was saying, despite herself: "That leg's going to take a while to heal, though; it'd definitely broken, she really took a beating…" _No kidding,_ Ahsoka thought wryly. Note to self: moving leg bad idea. _Let's not try that one again anytime soon._

As the distraction of the pain faded, the conversation outside her door tuned back in. "So, what did you find out, talkin' to her? I mean… agh. Why is there a Tag… Terg… Tog… eh, whatever you called her. Why is there one in my study?"

There was a pause. "I'm not sure. She's pretty shook up… pretty disoriented. It took her a while to even come up with her name. I'll admit, she asked more questions than answered them, though who can blame her… and she seemed really upset when I told her we didn't know where the 'Skywalker' person is; after that, I didn't feel right questioning her."

Another pang jolted Ahsoka's heart at the sound of the name. She'd never known it was possible to feel such… emptiness, just because someone's presence was missing from her. _Is this what Master Yoda was talking about when he told me about Force Bonds?_ The thought was a bit sudden, a bit surprising. A memory she couldn't quite link to anything, but she knew the name and she knew the term and she knew somehow this was the best explanation. She shoved the curious fact that here was yet another 'Master' to the back of her mind – he was not _her_ Master – and instead chose to store away this memory for consideration and analysis later. Because now Manarin was talking again, and curiosity won out over propriety.

"Oh, him again? Man, that guy's all she can think about, even when she's dang delirious. Did she say who he is, finally?"

"Not really," Keida admitted. "Just that he was a 'human' – she said like us, so I guess he looks Terranean…" Well that was a strange thought, they weren't human? Or maybe they just wanted to differentiate themselves by planet, she didn't know. "But all she'd really say is that he was her 'master'. Best I can guess, all things considered, is that she's some sort of slave and he's the man who owns her, but… I don't know; the idea seemed to upset her." Ahsoka frowned slightly. No, 'slave' just… wasn't right. No one '_owned_' her.

"Well, you wouldn't like it if someone accused _you_ of being a slave girl right after you'd woken up from a near-death experience by crash landin', either, I'd wager." For some reason, this made her giggle slightly. "But, what's really buggin' me is… what's a kid like her doing pilotin' a UFO alone, anyways? I mean… where _is_ this 'master' of hers? Unless her folk are just naturally that little, she's gotta be a kid. And who puts a kid in a spaceship alone and sends 'em off at a random planet? And then… how'd she crash, anyways? Somethin' about this just don't seem right." Ahsoka felt an odd mixture of affront and uncertainty. So what if she was young? She could take care of herself! _…Claims the girl who hardly knows her own name and is confined to bed barely able to move after her blinking pod crashed._

"I don't think she was piloting anything; I think that thing was an escape pod," Keida answered thoughtfully. There was a pause, and then she cleared her throat. "Or, well, something of the sort. I mean, it looked too small to be an actual spaceship. Aren't they supposed to be big things?"

"How could you _tell_, the thing was so beat up… besides, you never know, what with all the fancy technology aliens are supposed to have, and… oh, dang it, not my point. There's a freakin' alien kid taking up the pull-out bed, Keida. She fell out of the sky and crashed in the plains and you went and dragged her home like… like some sorta stray kiflu. It's only a matter of time before one of the hands figures out somethin's going on.There's been three Agents out at the crash already; sooner or later someone's gonna to come here to see what we know, and we're keepin' an injured _alien_ in my _study. _How can you act like this ain't completely _insane_?"

Keida never got the chance to answer. A strange sound interrupted their talking, an odd, high-pitched ring that echoed in Ahsoka's montrals and made her wince. What _was_ that, some sort of alarm? "Whoops, I got it," Keida announced. "Manny, go check on Ahsoka, please? Come on, if she's going to be here, the least you can do is make nice. And if she wakes up, you can take a look at her leg; you know more about that sort of thing than I do…" and her voice faded; Ahsoka could only assume she walked away. She heard Manarin grumbling and a creak from the door as he moved to open it, so she hurriedly closed her eyes and pretended she was still asleep.

Cerano meowed as Manarin walked into the room. Ahsoka could hear his footsteps – he walked heavily, or maybe the hard floor and small room just made the sound seem louder – but something felt off. Not about him – about her. She could sense his movements, of course, she always could, but… that was oddly hazy, too. Vague, uncertain. Like the fog in her mind was fogging her spatial sense too, and this was a very strange feeling for the young Togruta. She kept her eyes closed as she puzzled over this and the footsteps halted beside the bed. Cerano meowed again.

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya, skelti. Hush up, you'll wake the kid," the man said, his voice politely quiet, and Ahsoka felt a slight pang of guilt for the charade – she just didn't know how to face these unfamiliar people right now, wasn't ready for another question-and-answer session. Cero faded back into purring, and for a moment that was the only sound. Then Manarin's voice came again, still quiet. "Don't know what the big deal is, darn woman. I seen you when we brought you in here. S'not like you need people to watch you sleep. I don't like it when people watch me sleep, it creeps me out."

Cerano meowed and was shushed a third time, so he proceeded to nudge her pointedly; Ahsoka wasn't sure whether she wanted to grin or sigh at the creature. Oh, well… it was an excuse to 'wake up' – she still didn't much want to, but she felt guilty. She felt she pulled off a pretty good yawn-and-stretch act – inasmuch as she could comfortably stretch – and moved one hand to pet Cerano as she opened her eyes. "Hey, little guy…"

"Darn skelti, I told you you'd wake the kid," Manarin muttered, and Ahsoka looked over at him. She wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected, but whatever it was, he wasn't it. Manarin was tall and appeared strong, but somehow, he didn't look as… intimidating, as she'd thought he would. His short, slightly spiky hair was a dark blonde color with just the slightest hints of grey, and his eyes were green and had a sort of mischievous glint to them. He wore a vest and trousers vaguely reminiscent of farmers she'd seen once on Naboo.

"Oh… uh… hi," she tried hesitantly, self-consciousness flooding back as her mind reminded her that this was the man who thought her a weird, tentacle-horned alien creature who was infringing on his room.

"…Hey." There was a short but very awkward silence, broken when Cerano got irritated by the fact that her hand was resting on his head but doing no scratching of his ears and proceeded to mrow and nudge at her hand in protest. Manarin frowned. "Dang thing's so needy. Can't stop pettin' him for a minute else he goes nuts."

Ahsoka smiled slightly, resuming petting the creature. "He's cute."

"Eh, I guess." Silence again. This time, Manarin broke it. "You speak Common. Didn't expect that, to tell the truth."

She blinked. "Common? You mean Basic?"

"No, I mean Common. But I guess maybe it's the same thing, I dunno. Point is, I didn't expect you to understand our language."

Ahsoka wasn't too sure how to respond to that. "Well, uh… I do." She paused. "It's, uh… it's the standard language… most everyone knows it."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." More silence. Ahsoka fidgeted a bit; Manarin cleared his throat.

"I'm Ahsoka," she finally offered, feeling an introduction couldn't hurt.

"I know. I mean, Kei told me. I, um… I'm Manarin. Manny, really." He hesitated a moment, then glanced around the room, grabbing a small wooden chair and pulling it over so he could sit in it. "I guess this is interestin', when I really think about it… I never met an alien before."

She frowned slightly, despite herself. "I'm not an alien," she said softly, "I'm a Togruta."

"That's pretty 'alien' to me, kid," he responded. "All we've got here are Terraneans, and none of us fell out of the sky. 'Togruta', you said?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

He nodded. "Interestin' word. I'll forget it by tomorrow. And the name's nice, 'Ahsoka', but I don't say it like you do." It was true: Manny had an odd accent, which made her name sound a bit awkward when coming from his mouth; he drawled his vowels a bit too much. "I hate when people butcher my name, so I ain't gonna do it to you. Since you don't like 'alien', I think I'm just gonna call you 'kid'. Better'n nothin'."

She blinked, not sure how she felt about that. "Well… it's… better than 'alien', I guess," she conceded begrudgingly, earning herself her first grin from the man.

"Well, then, kid, Kei's gone and told me it's my job to see how you're leg's patchin' up."

She frowned. "It hurts," she stated simply.

"I'd figured that. But that ain't quite enough information, really. So I'm gonna have to take a look." It took her a second to figure out exactly why he was saying this and looking at her like that – _Oh._ She blushed slightly. Except for blankets and bandages, she wore nothing but a cloth tied into a loose skirt. Torso-wise, bandages covered everything she might worry about – but he didn't know that, and what with that and the length of the 'skirt' he probably wanted permission, to make sure he wouldn't offend her. She nodded slightly.

He was surprisingly gentle as he rearranged the blankets, keeping her covered as best he could while still granting himself access to the leg in question. He stifled a whistle; she risked a glance down and soon wished she didn't. She'd been bandaged and splinted, but it was still clear where her leg was swollen, and there was blood on the bandages – not fresh, but it was still enough to make her look away quickly. He noticed.

"Don't look pretty, I know… but don't worry, kid, it'll heal. I may not look it, but I know a thing or two 'bout broken bones." He knelt beside the bed, trailing his eyes over her leg before reaching out to gently shift it for a better look; she winced and gave a small hiss of pain. "Sorry." He cocked his head slightly. "Gonna be a while before you're walkin' on this regular again, though, I'll tell ya that."

She didn't like that idea. "Don't you, like… have any bacta or something?"

"What's bacta?" he asked, and she blinked.

"Bacta… is… well, it's a… medical… substance, that you… you put it on a wound, and it makes it heal faster. Like… really fast." She felt awkward, trying to explain it – she'd never had to explain something so common and well-known as bacta. "It's got something to do with tissue regeneration… I'm not really sure."

"We don't got anything like that around here," Manny said. "Wish we did, sounds like good stuff." He shook his head. "Nope, it's good old-fashioned natural healin' for you, kid." She sighed. "I'm gonna have to get some stuff to re-do this splint for ya." Manny stood back up. "Um… do you want anything? You hungry?"

Now that he mentioned it, she _was_. "Yeah, actually."

He nodded. "What do… Togruta? What do you Togruta eat?"

She shrugged one shoulder, wincing slightly at the sting of it – wrong shoulder. "What do you have?"

He thought for a moment. "You like fruit? We got a lot of fruit… got an orchard. Bread, meat… I dunno, we're food-farmers here." He mimicked her act of shrugging one shoulder. "I'll bring ya a bit of everything, we'll see what you like." And with that he headed out the door, and she leaned back against the pillows with a sigh and petted Cerano the skelti as he lay back down beside her. She missed her Master and she was rather confused and she still didn't know where she was, and every passing moment was convincing her that this was going to be a very strange experience._ When I said I wanted experience… this wasn't exactly what I had in mind._


	4. Chapter 3

Yep, this one's short. Eh, I knew it would be. Anakin's PoV, hopefully this will clear up some questions… but, I'm gonna warn you right now, Anakin's PoV is not my forte. Personally, I don't think this chapter is good, but it was necessary. Anakin might seem a bit OOC – that's partially because of how he's changed in the events preceding this story (anything important will be explained in-story, so don't worry about those) and partially because I'm just not that great at writing him and I know it. XD Thanks for reading, please review, but keep in mind that I've already admitted I suck at Anakin and be nice along those lines, okay?

**Chapter Three**

Not ten seconds after launching the escape pod he'd ordered his Padawan into, Anakin already doubted his decision. Sure, he'd been trying to keep her safe, but this wouldn't be the first time his decision to keep someone 'safe' had blown up in his face. …Bad choice of words, but true. He'd hoped their attackers would be so intent on his ship that they wouldn't notice a launched escape pod, but apparently that was not true; a pang of fear hit him when two of the Tinnies' ships turned their fire on the pod, and in the back of his mind he wondered if it was his fear or Ahsoka's he was feeling.

Though for now he'd have to trust Artoo to keep the pod's systems working, he couldn't have the droids shooting at it. This old hunk of metal might be going down and going down hard, but it still had guns. He momentarily abandoned the comm. panel he'd been arguing with – the power systems were damaged and slowly failing – and turned his attention to getting the attention off Ahsoka's pod and back onto the ship. Or, better yet, take down some of the Tinnies altogether… _Ha! _One down… seven to go. Small victories. But, the pod was far enough away now… it had taken some fire, but he could only trust – _hope_ – it was still safely intact. But even so, landing alone on some mystery planet… _She's not alone, she's with Artoo._ He whirled back to the communications panel.

This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. You didn't come across mystery planets in empty space. There shouldn't _be_ a planet here. Especially not a planet that seemed to auto-spawn these weird, fast little attack vessels he'd never seen before, bent on shooting down his ship in the middle of a 'Why is there a planet here?' back-and-forth between himself and his Padawan that would have been amusing had it had time to be. His attempts at communications with them had either failed or been ignored; he could only assume they were Separatist droids. They were impressive craft, powerful for their size and annoyingly quick and hard to hit. Ahsoka was a _good_ gunner, but by the time they'd realized communications weren't going anywhere and started firing back, they'd already taken some good hits. Anakin knew when a ship was going down. He wanted to get off their coordinates to any nearby allies, but the more bolts that hit the ship, the more sure he was that this was not a good place to be.

Ahsoka hadn't wanted to leave without him. She _really_ had not. That kid could argue the wings off a Toydarian if she wanted to, but Anakin could hold his own, and he had been both frustrated and determined. Still, he had only gotten her into that pod with a direct order, some shoving, a decent amount of shouting, and myriad promises to follow directly after as soon as he got off a comm. link. And even then, he'd felt her frustration and worry, and the strange pang both of them had felt as he'd cast one last look at her before the pod door shut.

Blast this comm. panel! This would be easier with Artoo here. _No way was I sending Snips alone,_ and the wish he hadn't pushed Artoo in there with her passed. But this was not working. He groaned in frustration and angrily slammed his fist onto the panel, cursing in Huttese. Another blast shook the ship, and for a moment he was torn between logic and his own stubborn determination. But he'd promised Ahsoka he'd follow her, and he couldn't well do that if he was in the ship when it blew. He made another frustrated noise in his throat as he turned for the escape pods. Maybe he could get the comm. link working in there.

There was something unspeakably… enraging, about watching one's ship be blown to bits. But at the same time, he'd timed it frighteningly perfectly; they'd likely not see his pod in the blast, and as long as he hit the planet safely, he'd be good. But why in the nine Correlian hells was the flaming comm. link not working? What, did those ships put up a comm. lock? He fought with the darned thing the whole way down.

No pod landing was ever smooth. In Ahsoka's opinion, he knew, no pod landing even counted as a 'landing'. But he supposed as far as crashes go, he'd had some worse ones. At least the pod was still intact when he climbed out of it, and he was only minimally bruised. _Well, they weren't shooting at __**you**__._ He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Ahsoka was a tough little thing; she'd be fine. Now, where the heck was he?

He looked around, feeling a vague sense of disgust as he found himself reminded a bit of the deserts back on Tatooine. Except instead of endless expanses of sand, it was klicks upon klicks of dry, yellowed grass and hard soil. It was hot and dry, though, not unlike the deserts – though the heat wasn't quite so searing, thankfully. But the open expanse of nothing was still a bit disheartening to look at. He glanced over his shoulder at the pod, debating for a moment. So, something was blocking communications. Well, he'd have to find a comm. station on this planet, then, or someplace to acquire a ship. But his first goal was without question – he had to find his Padawan. It hadn't been too long between her pod launching and his; hers couldn't have landed _that_ far away… relatively.

For a moment he stood still, concentrating, reaching out through the Force to find her. But he could instantly tell that something was wrong. He couldn't sense her. Though that initially sent a jolt of terror through him, he quickly fought to calm himself – he'd know if she was… he'd know, he'd have felt that the second it happened, he was sure of it. No, what was wrong with this was, he couldn't sense much of _anything_. The Force felt… hazy. Static-y, like the comm. link, blocked. It was a weird feeling, a _wrong_ feeling. He frowned darkly and determinedly tried to push through the haze, but it was difficult. And if _he_ was finding it difficult… well, presumed arrogance aside, that was a big deal.

"Great," he muttered, his voice sounding oddly loud in the silent, wind-swept plains. "Just great." He turned back to the pod, and spent the next ten minutes gathering and sorting supplies into a pack. He'd need rations, and medical supplies in case Ahsoka was hurt when he found her – after a crash like that, there was a decent chance she'd be banged up a bit. Good thing he'd finally done what Obi-wan always tried to get him to – stocked the escape pods with emergency supplies. _Alright,_ he begrudgingly admitted to himself, _it __**does**__ come in handy on the off-chance we have to use the pods._

Supplies gathered, he stood staring back out over the empty plains, mentally cursing in every language he could think of – once he would have been cursing out loud, but Ahsoka seemed to know at least bits and pieces of enough languages to have trained him relegate the more explicit of the words to mental-only. The whole planet better not be plains like this. For that matter, this planet had better be inhabited by a sentient race. He was a great mechanic, but even _he_ couldn't convert an escape pod into a working spaceship, at least not without a good number of extra parts. But he'd worry about that later.

The Force might be hazy, but he was still in-tune with it. He couldn't sense her well enough to pinpoint a location, but he could figure on a general that-way direction. He gave a grunt of irritation and started walking. "Snips better have stayed put," he stated to no one in particular. If she'd gone and wandered off on some strange planet alone save for an R2 droid… he'd stick the kid on the bridge at base for the next three standard months. He sighed heavily. He had the feeling he was in for a long walk.


	5. Chapter 4

Yay for chapter four! Sorry this one took a bit long. I've been busy with a bunch of silly little stuff. This one's long (for me) though, so hopefully that will make up for it. A bit more explaining done, hopefully a few questions answered, and a taste of this planet's government. I will admit, half of the stuff in this chapter was unplanned and just sort of wrote itself in – Terrania has already changed a lot from my original view of it. But I really like what it's becoming; I hope you guys do too. I want to thank both Yoda1976 and Golden Snowflake for their consistent reviews. Both of you guys are helping me out a lot, both by encouraging me to keep going and helping direct me with your comments and questions. :) And to all my other reviewers, same to you, thanks a lot. I love to know people like my writing. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and please keep the reviews coming!

**Chapter Four**

Ahsoka perched on a fence post, swinging her good leg idly as she watched Manny try to catch a baby Eqqulen – a large hoofed quadruped of varying color and appearance; this particular one was a sort of grayish-green, with a richer, almost turquoise-tinted green mane and tail, and little shimmering insectoid wings. He was strangely adorable, she had to admit. Manny had told her they raised them as beasts of burden, and for riding, and one variety even produced milk. This one, though, had escaped from the paddock and now only seemed to want to play; she giggled as Manny chased the little thing in circles, unable to catch it.

"You think it's funny, do you? I'd like to see you catch this thing, kid," Manny muttered, shooting her a half-glare. She grinned cheekily and motioned innocently to her bandaged leg.

"Well, usually I would, but…"

"Yeah, yeah, excuses. Ask me, you shouldn't even be outside. S'risky, I don't care if the help's got the day off or not. 'Course, no one ever asks me…" He grunted as he tried to grab the Eqqulen's halter and the little thing dodged again with a playful neigh. "Dangit, Swiftwing, we named you right."

Two more days had passed, nearly a week altogether since she'd been brought here. Things were finally clearing up. The haze was still present, but she'd sort of figured it out – something here was throwing off the Force, and that's what had left her feeling so confused. She'd never experienced a block in the Force before; it was hugely disorienting, especially because it seemed to be throwing off her spatial senses too, whatever it was. Everything had made a lot more sense once she'd remembered that, once she'd figured it out. Once you knew the Force, everything else sort of fell into place. She was a member of the Republic, a Commander in the Clone Wars despite her age. Not a slave or servant, but a Jedi Padawan. She and her Master had been shot down over this planet by some new Separatist ships they'd never seen before. There were still some holes, but she was figuring things out, much to her relief. Even though the more she figured out, the more wrong things felt. Something was off here, there was something she was missing, but she just couldn't place anything specific.

She hadn't told Keida and Manny much of it. She couldn't really say why. There was just something in the back of her mind that told her it might not be a _bad_ thing for them to think she was some sort of servant girl, to not know the details of the war, to not know she was a Padawan whose Master had gone missing and who was facing some strange barrier in the Force. It wasn't really that she didn't trust them… really. They'd given her no reason _not_ to trust them. She'd just learned to trust her instincts first. And her instincts told her that caution was prudent on a planet she knew nothing about with a race she likewise knew little about, especially when the planet appeared to be guarded by the bad guys. At least until she found out more and could formulate some plan of action – and was actually in good enough condition to manage anything of the sort – it might be best to keep a few secrets.

Terrania was odd – primitive. And a strange sort of primitive, too – not like Kashyyyk was primitive, but somehow even more so, yet less so at the same time. Of course, she only had this one little farm to judge by, but… the technology they had was so… backwards! And yet, it was somehow intriguing, too; she'd spent three hours the day before watching little flat moving pictures on the 'T.V.' unit – she'd never heard of a Teevee droid before, and it seemed terribly basic, with only one real function – trying to figure out why the pictures were flat on a viewing screen when holograms would be so much more practical, albeit less colorful. But all this stuff was so _primitive_! Their comm. units were annoying ringing things that only carried voices, no images; their lighting was mostly candles, and old-fashioned electric bulbs – _Such energy gulpers!_ – in strange-looking lamps. And as far as any intergalactic technology – like spacecraft – went, Keida claimed they didn't have _any_. Not even any droids – well, nothing more advanced than the weird little Teevee in the main room. They had landspeeders, and a couple of hovercraft-sounding vehicles, but that was it. She couldn't understand how they could have some things but be missing so many others; it was mind-boggling. But at least as far as civilization went, they seemed to be decently modern, from what she'd been told. So, there was that.

The weirdest thing so far was how little her hosts actually knew about… about _everything_. They knew there were other planets out there, of course, but that was about as far as it went. They'd never left their own planet; they had no clue about all the worlds out there. They thought theirs was the only inhabited planet, for crying out loud! When she'd told them how _many_ planets there were, and how many different 'alien' races there were besides just Togruta, they'd looked overwhelmed. And when she tried to explain any of the technology, from bacta to spaceships to something as simple as a blaster, they'd seem confounded by how 'advanced' it all was – especially Manny, who had sat shaking his head and muttering about alien technology and conspiracy theories until Keida had elbowed him to shut him up. To tell the truth, Ahsoka was astounded too, but of course for a completely different reason – how could they just _not know_ any of this? It was yet another thing about this entire situation that was just somehow _wrong_.

She took comfort in the firm belief that her Master was still alive and safe. She had little doubt in her mind that she'd _know_ if he'd been killed. She might not be able to sense him, reach him, but she knew he was alive, the same way she'd _known_ Master Plo had survived, the same way she'd _known_ how to disarm those bombs on Kiros. She didn't try to explain it or reason it out, she just believed and left it at that. As long as he was alive, he'd find her, and together they'd figure out what wasn't right, and how to get off this strange planet and back where they were supposed to be.

"Dangit, beast, stay still!" Manny's voice pulled her from her musings.

"Aw, he just wants to play," she defended the little creature.

"Yeah, well, we've played. Now I need to get this lead on him 'fore he decides to go runnin' off 'cross the Plain." Despite his outward irritation, Ahsoka could tell that Manny was a bit amused at the whole thing himself. He wasn't as gruff as he liked to act, and it was clear he was fond of his animals, perhaps better with them than with people as a whole. She liked Manny – he sort of reminded her of Master Obi-wan, in a way. He was wise behind his simple appearance and speech, and kind-hearted even if he liked to act all rough, and he wasn't nearly as intimidating as she'd first feared – in fact, he was a big softie when you got right down to it.

"Why don't you get him a treat so he'll come to you?" She suggested. Manny paused, and blinked, and Ahsoka grinned slightly at the look on his face as he realized he should have thought of that a while ago.

"S'bad enough that he's gone and run outta the fence, without me rewarding him for it," he muttered, shaking his head, but conceded. "Grab me a karrot, will ya, Red?" 'Red' seemed to have become an addition to 'kid' when he wanted to address her. She chose to consider it a term of endearment rather than insult to her pigmentation. She'd admit she had been a bit insulted the first time he'd said it – until she heard him call one of the Eqquli, a dark rose-toned stallion named Skyfeather, 'Pinky', and then she'd realized it was just another nickname. After that, it just became amusing.

She carefully slid off the fence post, moving slowly so as to avoid any undue pain and balancing on one leg as she reached for the walking stick she'd been using as a crutch. "Oh, sure, send the cripple on an errand," she quipped, limping over to the basket containing the long orange vegetables and bending awkwardly to get one. _Ugh, I'm gonna be so glad when I can actually __**move**__ again… _She straightened stiffly and turned to deliver the karrot. Swiftwing noticed what she had before she'd gotten back to give it to Manny and pranced over to her, nickering; she giggled. "He's not so hard to catch; I don't know what your problem was."

"He likes you better'n he likes me, darn thing." Manny moved to clip the lead to Swiftwing's halter as the Eqqulen munched on the karrot Ahsoka held out to him. He ruffled the creature's mane. "We'll get him trained up yet, though, no worries. Pretty soon them wings'll be good an' strong and he'll be pullin' the cloud-harvesters with the best of 'em."

"Cloud-harvesters?" Ahsoka asked, glancing over at him, and then up at the yellow-tinted clouds in the oddly purple-ish sky.

"Yep. Kinda like big flying vacuums. These guys pull 'em to suck up the clouds. Clouds are a special type of water, see, got some sorta mineral or somethin' that don't come down in the rain; it's lost in the condensation. But if we collect it right as clouds we can refine the mineral outta 'em, an' it's real healthy, used in a lot of bio-stuff I don't right understand. But it sells good, and that's all I need to know. Everyone uses it… hospitals, military, even us common folk." Manny glanced over at her. "All the food we produce does us good, but that mineral – it's called Kirotin – is our main source of income. S'what Kei's been usin' on you, Red. It's why you're healin' up so quick."

"Not quick enough," she muttered wryly, half-glaring down at her still-aching leg. Manny chuckled, turning to lead Swiftwing back into the domed paddock, set up to give the Eqquli room to wander and graze while the large, bubble-like dome kept the flying ones from being able to escape.

"Well, it'll patch up. Still say it'd do better if you weren't walkin' 'round on it…"

"I was _bored_," Ahsoka said defensively, "and Keida said I should come see the Eqquli since the farmhands weren't around…"

"I know, kid, I know. All I'm sayin' is, we're givin' up some of our harvest to fix you up, I'll be a bit irked if you go an' make it worse on me, eh?" She hung her head slightly, so he smiled over at her to soften the words. "Ah, what do I know, you're a tough little thing. You'll do fine." Ahsoka recognized in this statement that she'd been pardoned, and smiled back.

She noticed the sound first. A ringing, high-pitched whine, hollow and strange, carried over the plains by the wind and getting louder fast. For a moment it was easy to write it off as some sort of background noise and ignore it, but within a minute it had become much to piercing to do that. Manny froze as soon as he heard it, something like fear crossing his expression; Ahsoka put her hands over her ears. "Oh, stang, what _is_ that?" But Manny didn't answer; he was too busy pulling the paddock gate closed, cursing under his breath.

"Go to the barn," he ordered her sharply, pointing behind him at the large red building as he scrambled for the gate locks.

"What, why?" she asked, confused, hands still over her ears to block the sound, which had risen to something of a hollow shriek.

"Damnit, Red, don't ask questions, get movin'!" He was nearly shouting now, partially just to be heard above the noise. Still confused but detecting the frantic note in his voice, she turned to head for the barn as quickly as she could, ignoring the pain in her leg and noticing for the first time exactly how much it slowed her down to have to walk with a crutch. She'd only gotten about halfway there by the time Manny finished with the locks and dashed after her; she gave a startled yelp as he scooped her up into his arms and sprinted the rest of the distance to the barn. She couldn't help but feel embarrassed; maybe she was slow, but she wasn't _helpless_. She could walk on her own!

"What's going on?" she asked as he set her down. He shushed her before she'd even finished the question.

"No time. Stay in here. Hide… hide somewhere, don't come out, whatever you do. Don't make any noise, and do _not_ go near any of the windows or open the door for anythin', no matter what. Got it?"

"But…"

He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eyes. "Don't ask questions, Ahsoka, just do what I say! Hide, and stay quiet!"

She gulped and nodded, and he released her, darting out of the barn and pulling the doors firmly shut behind him, leaving her standing there feeling distinctly frightened and still not knowing why. She heard the clang of the bar as he pushed the lock into place, and this extra burst of caution only increased her nervousness.

This was her first time in the barn, so she had no clue where to go. She looked around frantically for a hiding spot. It was disorienting; without her spatial senses working quite right she had to rely on her eyes and guesstimates for distance and room. There were some vehicles in here, tractors and plows and something she guessed might be the cloud-harvester; in the back were pieces of equipment she'd never seen before but could make an educated assumption that they must have something to do with getting the Kirotin out of the clouds. A soft thrumming noise came from the machinery, barely audible over the shriek outdoors, yet somehow calming. She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to relax a bit. A good amount of the food harvests were kept in here too – it would be easy for her to hide among the crates. They were tall enough, and it looked like there was enough room between them. She headed for them, taking note of the position of a cracked window nearby and avoiding it as she'd been told to.

She wasn't sure how long she remained sheltered amongst the crates, keeping as still as she could. Long enough for her leg to start throbbing horribly and her side to begin aching from the strain of the crouched-over position. After a few minutes that felt a lot longer than they were the shrieking sound had died off, and she'd been very tempted to leave the barn and find out what was going on, but Jedi discipline kicked in – as it so rarely did – and she decided grudgingly that this was probably one of those 'follow orders' times when she should wait for someone to come and get her. It eventually became apparent this was a good idea once she heard the voices from outside, sounding through the nearby window.

While Manny's voice was instantly recognizable, she had no clue who the other voices belonged to. For that matter, she couldn't even quite make them out. While Manny's voice was clear, the others seemed strangely muffled, leaving her only able to make out half of the conversation. But that was enough.

"A crash, you say? Out in the Plain? Now I wouldn't be knowin' much of anythin' 'bout that. There were some bright light come fallin' down in the middle of the night, about a week ago. We thought it was a shootin' star… but I think I remember some noises too." The muffled voices said something, then Manny spoke again. "No, we didn't go lookin' for nothin'. We got a full schedule goin' on here, with the Kirotin shortage goin' on; we don't got time to go trampin' 'round in the fields after shootin' stars or meteors or whatever it was. What was it, anyways?" A sharp response, then, "Sorry, Agent, just wonderin'." More muffled talk, a bit more forceful now. "I'm tellin' ya, Agent, we didn't go lookin' for nothin', and we didn't find nothin'. 'Cept for seein' the light, we hardly knew anythin' happened. It's been business as normal here, nothin' weird at all, nothin' that'd interest you all. We're just a simple farm."

For a second there was silence, then footsteps accompanying voices, then a loud thump at the barn door that made her jump, and then cower lower among the crates. Manny's voice sounded again, sounding distinctly irritated now. "Hey, you got no right to go in there." The voices argued back. "I know, Agents, but this farmer knows the law. You ain't got no warrant." Pause for response. "I got nothin' to hide. That in there's where we refine the Kirotin. I'm sure you know what a delicate process it is, an' how easy it is to contaminate it if somethin' goes wrong in the middle of the work. What with the shortage goin' on, seems to me it wouldn't be worth it to let anyone go trampin' 'round in there without good reason when I told you full well there ain't nothin' goin' on."

This line of argument went on for a bit longer, a back-and-forth she could only hear one side of. Her mind was racing. These 'Agents'… must be government of some sort, she guessed. And they were asking questions about weird things happening, a week ago – they were asking about her pod crashing. And Manny was flat-out lying. For some reason, that concerned her more than anything else.

On a whim, driven by a growing irritation at her inability to make out the Agents' words, Ahsoka made an attempt to reach out through the Force, to try to sense what was going on with these people, what their motives were. If she concentrated hard, she could penetrate the haze a little; she knew this from practice when she was alone. Maybe if she could push through it enough, she could find out… the barrier was sudden and shocking. There was no other way she could describe it but a barrier – like she'd hit a wall. She literally felt it like a shield around these Agents, something she couldn't describe and had never felt before, something that broke her concentration instantly and left her sitting with head aching and mind reeling.

Slowly focus returned, enough that she could hear the last bits of the argument outside – Manny determinedly refusing to allow the Agents into the barn – or the stables, or the house, or into any building on the property without the proper warrant. "With all due respect, you got no reason to search our property, Agents, we ain't done nothin' wrong."

There were more voices and she could tell they weren't happy, but then came the footsteps and they were walking away. She felt a slight relief, but couldn't quite relax. After another few minutes the whining sound began again, this time raising almost immediately to a shriek and then fading away slowly as more minutes ticked by; she covered her ears again and huddled there, strangely overwhelmed by an unexplainable fear. What _were_ they, what was this _place_, with barriers that made the Force hazy and stopped it altogether, that took away the thing she'd always been connected to? By the stars, what _was_ this? And what did they want with her, and why did it scare her so much? Since when did she get so… unfocussed, so thrown off? She closed her eyes. _Master, where are you?_ She'd never felt quite so alone.

Finally the whining faded, though she did not move. She sat in place, still and quiet, until she heard the lock being undone and the barn door scraping as it was pushed open, and still frightened she remained in place, holding her breath, waiting.

"Red?" Manny's voice sent a pang of relief through her so strong it almost made her dizzy.

"Here," She answered, standing a bit shakily; her side was hurting, and her leg throbbed in protest to the movement.

Manny crossed the distance to her in a few quick strides, looking rather relieved himself. "Thank the Light. Damn AA's… I thought they were gonna bust their way right in… you alright, kid?"

She nodded slowly. "Y-yeah… who were they? What did they want?"

He sighed. "They're the government, Red, and they want you." She didn't have a response to this; he shook his head slightly. "But, they're gone for now. Come on… you're all shaky." She glanced down at her hands, a bit embarrassed to discover he was right – she was shaking a bit. "S'nuff excitement for one day. Let's get you off that leg, eh? Keida's gonna be out of her mind worryin' 'bout you, I'm sure." She looked up at him, and he offered a small smile in an attempt to be comforting. "I'll explain when we get to the house, alright?"

She nodded, though some part of her wasn't at all sure she really wanted an explanation. "Okay." And Manny scooped her into his arms again and headed for the house, and this time the embarrassment was hardly there – she had too many other things to consider than to worry about being embarrassed. "Manny?"

"Yeah?"

She wasn't sure what to say. He'd just lied to his government for her. He'd given up his study for her, he'd let her sit out on the fence while he chased the Eqquli, he'd hidden her in his barn. And he'd faced those Agents – she could tell, whether through the Force or just through instinct, that he was scared of them. But he'd faced them, and lied to them, and sent them away, for the alien that was taking up a room of his house. "…Thank you."

There was a pause for a moment, then he sighed slightly, and smiled at her. "You're welcome, Red." After all, he really was a big softie, when you got right down to it.


	6. Chapter 5

Another Anakin PoV. I still think I suck at these, though I do thank Golden Snowflake for thinking I don't. He's hard for me to write… I'm thinking it'll get easier with practice, and as the story goes on and I get more of a feel for him, but right now he's still tricky. But, I muddle through. Hopefully you guys will too. XD This one's longer than the last Anakin chapter, so there's that, at least. And, to IncomCorporation, though like I said in the last author's note there are some reasons for his 'calmer' and more collected thought process, I tried to keep that in mind and make this one a bit less… structured? Or something along those lines. I think it turned out more how my brain works when I'm brooding, though, and I'll admit I'm much more Ahsoka than Anakin myself… we'll see. Anyways, thanks for reading, please review… and please be gentle, I'm still aware Anakin is not exactly my forte.

**Chapter Five**

Damn these plains. Damn this grass. Damn this _planet_, this was almost worse than the deserts of Tatooine. At least there he knew where the hell he was going. There was no _shelter_ on plains like this, either, just klicks and klicks of crunchy yellowed grass. He'd been walking these plains for what, nearly a week now, and hadn't found much different. Nothing to mark direction by, nothing to assure him that he wasn't just going in circles. He probably _was_ going in circles. He didn't have _time_ for this. He grunted in irritation and kicked a rock across the fields. _Where's the blinkin' pod? …Maybe it's not even in this area… maybe it landed somewhere else entirely._ No, it couldn't have. This is where the trajectory would have put it; there was no way he'd wound up on another part of the planet than her. It _had_ to be here. And he had to find it _fast_, before… he didn't want to think about that. He'd taken much too long already.

He was brooding. It was easy to do, in a situation like this. There was nothing visually interesting to hold his attention, and no voice chatting on to distract him. He could deal with the monotonous landscape, but damn he wanted that voice back. It was strange how used to her company he'd become, how odd – and unpleasant – it felt now to be alone. She wouldn't approve of his brooding; she'd do everything she could to snap him out of it. And she'd eventually succeed, she always did, somehow. He'd been doing a lot less brooding since she'd wound up his Padawan – she had a way of bringing him back, cheering him up. But she wasn't here. And it was _his_ fault she wasn't here. So he was brooding and wasn't likely to stop anytime soon.

Why did he send her on that pod in the first place? That was stupid. _The ship was going down! I had to get her off of it!_ So you put her on a pod so it could get shot down too? _Well, at least she wasn't on the ship when it got blasted._ No, she was _alone_ in some metallic hunk of an escape pod when _it_ crashed. He tried to convince himself that it had been a smooth, gentle landing for the pod, but he was pretty certain of the contrary – he'd felt her fear, after all; he'd felt the jolt through the Force as the droids aimed their lasers at the pod while it fell. But… it had made it… there had been no explosion, no horrible flash of fire to light up the darkness of space. The pod had made it onto the planet. So now he just had to find her. _And besides, she's not alone… Artoo is with her._ Why was that such a small comfort? …Damn these plains.

He tried to reach out, tried to sense his Padawan's presence, tried to feel her in the Force. But he couldn't – not now, not ten minutes ago, not twenty, not the past hour or two hours or yesterday or the day before or any day since he'd landed on this rock. He told himself it was just still being blocked – that had to be it; there was no other explanation. Unless… _No, Anakin, we are not going there. I'd know if that happened. Something's blocking my Force sense, that's all._

He didn't know how much longer he walked before he saw it. The pod was klicks away, easily visible thanks to the expanse of pure open area, but he could already see that the thing was not the shape it was supposed to be. "Ahsoka…" he broke into a run towards the pod. "Ahsoka!" He'd yelled her name three times before it hit him that he was probably too far away for her to hear him – or for him to hear any response. He stopped shouting and saved his breath for the run. The closer he got to the pod, the worse it looked. Anakin didn't think he'd ever run so fast; by the time he got near the escape pod his heart was pounding, and he doubled over for a moment, trying to catch his breath. "Ah… Ahsoka…" Deep breath, clear throat, try again. "Ahsoka!" No sound answered back.

Sweet mother of Chaos, the pod was a mess. It was a _wreck._ A hunk of mangled metal. He was a bit surprised at how simply this fact hit him, how calmly he took it. He covered the remaining distance to the thing in a few steps. _Yeah, even __**I**__ can't fix this thing, _he thought vaguely. "Ahsoka?" His mind was calm – his shaking voice betrayed him. "C'mon, Snips, answer me, here." He circled the pod – if one could even still call it a pod – looking for any sort of opening, an entrance or exit, some indication that she'd made a shelter out of this thing. All he found was a small gap, a place where a window had been, a couple feet above his head. "Ahsoka? You in there?" Still no answer.

His mind was already racing with explanations. There was no trace anyone was here – or had been here in a decent while. _Well, Skywalker, it's not like you got here particularly fast. She probably got… hungry, or something._ The Togruta could have a healthy appetite at times. She'd likely have gone through the rations by now – he had. He judged the distance, hoped he'd guessed the stability right, and hopped up onto a slab of metal to the side of the shattered window; it creaked and swayed, but held. _She probably went to look for food. _And, he wouldn't want to stay in the wrecked husk of an escape pod if he could help it._ She'd try to find another shelter while she was out there._ A twist and another jump, and a slightly awkward scramble to get in a position where he could look through the window without getting his clothes – or skin – in the way of the glass shards. A couple of them were already tipped with red… he shook the thought away. _Well, I didn't expect either of us to walk away from this without a couple scrapes._ There wasn't much room inside of the pod, with the metal all bent and twisted like that; this thing really was a wreck – and Ahsoka wasn't inside, that was instantly obvious. Anakin gave a small grunt of frustration, shifting back onto the slab.

_But Ahsoka never stays still for long._ Even if she'd found some shelter – even if _this_ was her shelter – she wouldn't just sit there. _She's probably out looking for me, the little laserbrain…_ she never knew when to stay put. He'd have to scold her for it. When he found her.

With little else to do, he began to dig through the wreckage. He'd sent Artoo with her – there were no droid tracks around the pod, but then, this dense, hard dirt didn't really leave much chance for impressions. Maybe the droid would have been able to leave some sort of message as to where they were going, though, something for him to follow. It was a vague hope, but it was a hope just the same, and at this point hope was what he needed, to keep his brain from straying to the darker thoughts he didn't want to let in. He couldn't fit in from the window; he'd have to make his own entrance – but a few quick slashes of his lightsaber made that easy enough. He grunted as he pulled back a heavy piece of battered hull, edges still warm from being sliced, opening the way into the pod.

Anakin didn't know what he was looking for – he guessed he'd know it when he found it. And it didn't take him long to find something. "Oh, crap…" That was a big red stain. Under a sharp, protruding piece of metal which was also stained deeply crimson. "Crap, crap, crap…" he stepped forward to examine it. A moment's hope of '_Maybe it's not her blood'_ was instantly erased. Who else's could it be; Artoo's? Droids don't bleed. _Not good, not good... but… she walked away._ She wasn't here, right? It was the only option. She was hurt – _I expected that, it's not that big a deal, is it? Positive thoughts, it's not as bad as it seems _– but she'd walked away. He took a deep breath and kept looking around.

There wasn't much to see. It had been a small pod to begin with, and the majority of it was crushed in; any consoles or electronics that Artoo might have used to leave any sort of message were definitely not in working order. He sighed slightly, turning in another circle, one last look before climbing out – and then he spotted it, barely visible, all but blending in among the shadows. He dropped to his knees and edged forward under a bent hunk of metal that had once been part of a console, stretching out his arm and reaching until his fingers closed around the familiar handle and pulled it out from beneath the smashed control panel. He stared at it in a strange, indefinable horror.

Sure, Ahsoka could have gotten hungry. Sure, she could have wanted better shelter. Sure, she could have decided to go look for him. But she was a Jedi, a well-trained Padawan. She would _not_ have done any of that, would _not_ have gone anywhere, without her lightsaber. They were in the middle of a war. _I taught her never to be caught unarmed._ And she'd learned the lesson well.

He didn't know how long he sat there for, staring at the saber, staring at the crimson stains, trying to keep his mind blank – blank was better than the alternative. Maybe he couldn't sense _her _directly, but he could feel the residual energies here, and that was all he needed to know the truth, which was making 'blank' a very hard thing to manage. _She's hurt. She's hurt __**bad**__. She's hurt, and unarmed, and I don't know where she __**is**__…_ Panic was rising. _I put her here._ It was Padme all over again… but, somehow, this was worse, and he hadn't thought that was possible, for anything to feel worse than that._ I put my Padawan in this situation. _Now panic and rage mingled as a painful pressure built in his chest, but still the voice in his head was horribly calm. _Snips is hurt and it's my damn fault. _He had her Lightsaber; he was gazing at stains made by her blood… and there was no denying it: that was a _lot _of blood. Walked away? _Hardly._

The Force pulse rattled the entire pod, making metal creak and screech loudly as the wave of power pushed up and away, unbending it, trying to 're-inflate' the pod into its old shape. Another movement, another push, and more screeching rent the air. Turn, push, turn, and push again. The noises were horrid; he didn't care. This was anger, this was pain, this was… he didn't know what it was. But it was a release; the effort it took to summon the Force, to blast the pod walls, it was mindless, it was power, it was release. The more metal he freed, the more spots of crimson he spotted, and the more the pressure in his chest increased. But still he kept going, until the pod was as close to its old shape as it was going to get – and just as empty as it had been before. He'd found nothing. The pressure all seemed to implode until it felt like his heart was being squeezed; the lightsaber fell from his hands and he dropped to his knees with a desperate shout of anguish. "Ahsoka!" Her name echoed eerily off the twisted metal.

He sat still for a long time, like a statue, unmoving, staring blankly at nothing, emotion spent and leaving him feeling strangely empty. When he finally did move, it was slow, deliberate. He picked up Ahsoka's lightsaber and held it almost reverently for a moment before positioning it at his waist opposite his own. Then, still slowly, deliberately, he turned for the opening he'd made and walked out of the pod. His Padawan was not here. Maybe he couldn't sense her, couldn't feel her, couldn't guess where she was – but, she was not here. And this meant that he had to find her, wherever she was, wherever she'd managed to go. Maybe he could save her… maybe he was already too late. But, either way, he had to find her. He'd gotten his Snips into this; he'd get her out if he could. And if he couldn't, well… he'd do what was right and proper for a Jedi Knight. He owed her that much.


	7. Chapter 6

Here we go, new chapter. Yay. Sorry it took so long – I blame college. I also think this one's a bit short – it was going to be longer, actually, but I wound up deciding a bit past where I end this one that if I didn't split it in half it would 1) take even longer to get out, and B) be like twice as long as any other chapter I'd yet posted. So I split it – which might explain the ending, which I feel is a bit awkward, but originally there was more to this which has now been moved to the next chapter. So there you go. Oh, side note. To all of you who keep asking where Artoo is. I'm not going to tell you; that would ruin it! :P No, but seriously. I am aware he's mysteriously missing. This is actually intentional. It's not an authorial oversight; don't worry, I know exactly where our favorite little droid is and this issue will be solved when the time comes. So, please keep reviewing, and as always, thanks for reading!

**Chapter Six**

Cooking was oddly therapeutic. It was a bit surprising, really – Ahsoka had never _cooked_ anything before. It was all dry rations or pre-prepared food or things made by droids or sometimes the Masters at the Temple or something bought at a market or a cantina, at least half of which was more pre-prepared stuff. Cooking, _real_ cooking, had kind of become a lost art, at least among those who travelled between planets without settling down on one. She'd never thought about it much before, but it was a bit of a pity, because cooking really _was_ strangely calming, and home-cooked food was undeniably good.

Keida had been surprised when Ahsoka had told her that she'd never really cooked before, and she had determined to teach her immediately. "Every girl should know how to cook! The men will never learn, so it's up to us to provide food that's actually _nutritious_." Ahsoka wasn't sure how she felt about that statement – why should it be the girl's responsibility to make sure the guys ate right? – but she couldn't deny that this was an enjoyable thing to do. She was currently involved in chopping karrots, while Keida was cutting up some strong-smelling vegetables called onions into small bits. They were making stew for the night's supper. It was a silent affair – save for the sounds of the knives on the chopping boards – but not uncomfortably so, at least not for Ahsoka. She was thinking, and silence was good for that.

She'd learned a lot the previous night. She wasn't sure what to _do _with the knowledge, but she'd learned a lot. That is, after Keida had finished 'freaking out', as Manny referred to it, overcome with relief to see Ahsoka was alright. It had taken manifold reassurances of her safety to calm the woman, who had seemed quite in a thither about her having been outside when the Agents arrived and how lucky it was she'd managed to hide quickly enough – "Luck nothing," Manny had argued, "I had to haul her into the barn like a sack of vegetables, kid was all concerned with askin' questions." But they'd eventually calmed Keida down, and then the explanations had started.

"Who were those people?" Ahsoka had felt like some broken holo-recording, repeating the same question yet again.

"Agents of the Terranean Alliance," Manny had answered, which hadn't seemed like much of an answer at all. Ahsoka had blinked at him, expectantly, and after a moment he'd expounded. "The Terranean Alliance is our government. Most people just call 'em the Alliance – or Allies, sometimes, informally. The Agents are kinda like… like the elite police force or somethin'." He frowned. "They're the guys you really don't want comin' to your house and askin' you questions, 'cause that's when you know you're in trouble."

It had been easy enough to make the connection. "You're in trouble… because of me?"

"Oh, sweetie, it's not your fault," Keida was quick to assure her. "It's just… well…"

"You aren't supposed to be here," Manny interjected, then after a moment seemed to realize how that sounded when Keida glared at him. "Not 'here' like with us here… I mean 'here' on this planet here. People aren't supposed to randomly show up in spaceships… or, well, crash in them, I guess…"

"It was an escape pod, not exactly a ship," she admitted, out of some weird desire to defend her piloting abilities – you couldn't exactly 'pilot' an escape pod; it hadn't been _her_ fault it had crashed like that. "The ship itself was… damaged." With a slight jolt of surprise, she'd realized for the first time that hers was the _only_ vessel she'd heard about crashing – had Master Skywalker managed to get the ship away to safety? Maybe he wasn't even on this planet – that thought brought an odd mixture of despair and relief all at once. _Or maybe the ship didn't even make it to the planet to crash…_ no, she'd been over this before, he wasn't dead. Just… missing.

"Oh?" Keida looked a bit interested at this new information – and strangely triumphant, Ahsoka thought. "I thought it was rather small for an actual spacecraft."

Manny shot her a look. "Yeah, good for you. Not the point. Point is, you ain't supposed to be here, kid… far as this place's concerned, you're not even supposed to _exist_. And that's more'n enough to send them Agents out here lookin' for ya." He paused then, looking as if something had just occurred to him. "Don't know why it took 'em so long, either – I'd had thought they'd be here a lot sooner, we're the only place for miles on the Plain, and definitely closest to where your ship-pod-thing crashed… an' comin' on Sunday, when all the hands got the day off, I'd have thought they'd wanna come on a day they could question 'em…"

"Maybe they had other concerns," Keida said quickly, "bigger things to worry about. They _are_ the government, after all, and with everything going on here right now, this is probably just a small concern, a bit of… space-debris landing here. For all anyone knows it's just a downed aircraft or something."

"A small concern? Keida, an alien fell out of the sky in the middle of the night in some sorta 'escape pod'. There's no way they coulda seen that thing and thought it was just random junk – or an aircraft? We don't got anything like that, and if we do, they'd be the ones that knew about it. If they really thought it was a downed plane, they wouldn't have _asked_ us about a downed plane; that was a cover story and you know it."

"Of course I do, but only because we have proof it wasn't just a plane. Besides, maybe they didn't think anything was in it. I mean, they didn't ask if we'd found anything living, they just asked if we'd seen anything odd or knew anything about an aircraft crashing… at least, that's what they asked me. Nothing about an alien or anything specific…"

"Well of course they're not just gonna out and ask 'Y'all seen any space aliens around here lately? We think we might have lost one.' That'd go over _real_ well to the general public…"

Feeling a bit forgotten and beginning to get a little irritated at the word 'alien' being thrown around so much again in reference to her, Ahsoka had cleared her throat and raised one hand to interject. "Uh, excuse me, still here. Still confused."

Manny looked over at her. "Sorry, Red. Anyways, like I was sayin' outside… they're lookin' for you. Don't know why they're so sure somethin' survived that – I wouldn't have thought it, seein' the mess that thing was. Or you when we found you, to tell the truth. But, they were askin' enough questions, an' I don't doubt they'll be back, tryin' to search the place again."

A glance at Keida's expression had been all Ahsoka needed to know that she agreed. It had been a weird feeling, the mix of guilt and responsibility Ahsoka felt about all of this – the knowledge that this trouble was her fault, even if she'd had absolutely no intention of causing this sort of thing, or any control over it happening. "Well… I mean, uh… if… if it's me that they want… then why'd you make me hide? I mean… I'll talk to them, I don't mind… I can answer their questions. Maybe they'll even be able to help me get back where I'm supposed to be." It had felt like it should make sense. Of course the government was curious about her, they'd never seen a Togruta before, but if she just _talked_ to them, explained the situation… they should know, shouldn't they; the government should be told, about the galaxy and the war and the… _everything_. And then they could help her find her Master, and get home. It made sense. But Manny was looking at her in a way that made the idea seem a lot stupider than it had felt, and even Keida looked uncertain.

"They don't want to talk to you, Red." It was said so matter-of-factly that it left her feeling silly for the suggestion.

"Then what…"

"They'll want to study you."

She blinked. "…'Study' me? Well, that… I mean, what, height and weight and midi-chlorian counts and things? I can tell them all that…" Manny stared at her blankly for a moment, while Keida narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.

"Midi… whatsits? Oh, it don't matter. That's not what they'd be after. I mean, yeah, they'd want to measure you and weigh you and what-not, but… look, I know you don't like it, but on this planet, you're an alien, kid. Chances are they wouldn't be stoppin' at just takin' a good look at you. They'd want to know what you are, how you _work_. They'd wanna know what you can do, what you can't, an' what it all means. They'd turn you into a science experiment. They'd drag you off to a lab somewhere to do all the testin' that they do, I dunno, I ain't no scientist. But they'd poke ya and they'd prod ya and they'd test ya and when they were done with whatever use you are alive, they'd probably dissect you to figure out how your insides are set up an' all that junk."

"Manny!" Keida scolded, for Ahsoka was staring at him, eyes wide in horror at the thought and a shade or two paler than normal. "We don't know that they'd do any of that… in fact, they likely wouldn't… you're a little girl, surely they'd… I don't know, consider things…"

Manny sighed heavily. "Yeah, right, consider 'em and toss 'em out. I doubt they'd care she's a kid; she's an alien first." He looked back over at Ahsoka. "Look, I'm bein' blunt and honest here. But this is why lettin' 'em take you is _not_ a solution. Leastways not one I'm considerin'." Though at this point that wasn't exactly a surprise, it was still a giant relief to hear it said; Ahsoka relaxed noticeably, leaning back in her chair.

"Then… what is a solution? If they're going to come back… I don't want to cause you any more trouble." And Manny smirked at her.

"From what I've seen, Red, you're just a walkin' ball of trouble anyways; I don't think it's avoidable." She wasn't sure whether to glare at him or laugh – hadn't Master Skywalker told her the same thing before? In the end it had made her smile, either way. "I don't know what we're gonna do, but we'll think of somethin'. An' in the meantime, we ain't gonna worry about it anymore'n we have to."

So here she was, chopping karrots and trying not to worry. It was easier said than done. She'd taken to the habit of repeating the old five-line mantra in her head, over and over, reminding herself of the Jedi Code. She liked the older version better, though they'd been taught the newer one at the Temple – the 'there-is-no' version, she'd once called it, to the amusement of the other Younglings and the disapproval of the Master teaching it to them. 'There is no, there is…' it seemed a fitting title to her, but apparently it was disrespectful. But she'd found the old, original version in an old datacard in one of the Temple libraries, and preferred it; after all, didn't it all mean the same thing? This one just didn't seem so… forbidding, in its wording.

_Emotion, yet peace. _She wished this one were easier to pull off. It was hard to turn all the emotions she was feeling right now into peace – they needed a lot of sorting, first. But she couldn't just ignore them; she'd have to work this through. She'd have to find the peace amongst the emotions. _Ignorance, yet knowledge_. Then again, sometimes ignorance really was bliss. Things were a lot more complicated, the more 'knowledge' she gained. But, this was a good thing – as Master Yoda said, one's mind was their greatest weapon, and knowledge would bring her the power she needed to work it all out. _Passion, yet serenity._ She still wasn't exactly sure what that one entailed. Didn't it basically say the same thing as the first one? 'Serenity' was basically the same thing as 'peace', she thought. But if they'd added it in, it must be different somehow, important in some way. She assumed it was one of those she would figure out with time and training. _Chaos, yet harmony._ Another tricky one to understand – as far as she could figure it was a matter of cosmology. Everything was in harmony, no matter how chaotic it seemed – and that meant Terrania, too. This planet was a part of the whole, and the Force was here too, even if it was hazy and clouded. The idea was a comfort. _Death, yet the Force._ The one she wasn't sure she'd ever fully understand – until it was her time to, and she would admit, she wasn't exactly in any rush for that. And it began again.

"That's probably enough karrots," Keida's voice broke into her mental mantra. "Add them to the pot and then we can start peeling the spuds." She nodded to the little heap of oddly-shaped brown vegetables; she'd called them 'potatoes' earlier – Ahsoka wasn't sure which was the proper term.

"Okay," Ahsoka responded, obediently turning to dump the chopped veggies into the pot of water and seasonings. She stirred the contents with the ladle for a moment, mixing the karrots in – they didn't really need to be mixed, but she did it anyway, an idle fidget. Then she turned back to Keida, and the next few minutes were spent in more lessons as Keida taught her how to safely peel the vegetables – "Always hold the blade away from yourself; many a one's got nicks on their fingers for peeling the wrong way," – and then they faded into silence again.

Keida had been rather quiet ever since the conversation the previous evening. It was a bit strange; usually she was quite talkative and Ahsoka had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. But since last night she'd hardly said a word to her outside of cooking lessons, and something in the back of Ahsoka's mind wondered vaguely if she'd done something wrong, if Keida was upset with her. Somehow, though, that wasn't the feeling she was getting, untrustworthy as her Force-sense may have become. She had no idea how to broach the subject, and so she didn't, and let the silence continue.

They'd gotten about halfway through the stack of vegetables when they heard the voices outside. Manny was shouting, and another voice with him – Ahsoka assumed one of the farmhands – and someone was shouting back. "Oh, no, they're not back already…" Keida exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "I… come on, Ahsoka, we need to… hide you, somewhere, quick."

But Ahsoka didn't move. She'd frozen in place, half-peeled potato in one hand with knife still in it, listening. The third voice… she couldn't quite make it out, what the words were, but it wasn't muffled like the Agents' voices had been. And there was no Force barrier around this presence – quite the opposite. She knew that voice. She _knew_ that presence. Vegetable and knife clattered to the floor; she was on her feet and heading for the door before she'd even quite registered the movement. "Ahsoka, wait!" But that wasn't an option.

If her leg hurt, she barely noticed; she was probably limping without the crutch but it didn't slow her down much this time. She hardly paused to turn the doorknob – what sort of doors had knobs? They should just slide open; that would be so much easier – all but flinging the door open, vaguely aware that Keida had come after her but not slowing to explain. It occurred to her too late that it might not be a good thing for the farmhands to see her, but she had to admit, she didn't care one bit what was a 'wise' idea right now.

"I told y'all yesterday I ain't lettin' ya on my property without a warrant, now get out of here!" Manny was shouting, and the man he was shouting at was shouting back, "I wasn't _here_ yesterday; I don't know what you're talking about! Just tell me if she's here!" and one of the farmhands was standing between them as if hoping he might be able to stop a fight from breaking out, looking baffled and trying to get a word in between all the yelling. Her voice interrupted all three.

"Master!" Manny whirled, looking shocked to see her and either angry or afraid, she couldn't tell; the farmhand gawked at her, exclaiming loudly in a language she didn't recognize; and behind her Keida was saying something, some sort of explanation or excuse. But her eyes locked with Anakin's, and he shoved past the other two men, ignoring Manny's protest, and caught her up in his arms, and she thought vaguely that he must have been really worried, because he wasn't usually one for hugs. The three Terraneans were talking, but she tuned out their voices; she only cared to listen to him.

"Damnit, Snips, I've been looking all over for you," and the words were scolding but there was nothing but relief in his tone. "When I saw that pod…" She tilted her head to glance up at him.

"I had you scared, huh?" Her voice was teasing, but sounded shaky to her ears.

"Me? Scared? Of course not." He tightened his arms around her. "But _never_ do that again." She returned the embrace and nodded. Things were still complicated – and possibly now moreso, because she could hear the farmhand still exclaiming while Manny tried to calm him down – and she might get in trouble for it but she'd worry about all that later, because for the first time since landing on this planet she finally felt whole and safe again, and with her Master here she could at last believe that things would turn out alright.


	8. Chapter 7

Yay, chapter. Everyone, meet Garvan. I wish I could claim the smarmy git as my own, but I can't – he's actually the creation of my best friend, and as such he narrowly escaped being named 'Tom' (it's his name in all her stories with him), but we eventually conceded that that wasn't a very Star Wars sort of name. He's an epic character, and I use him with permission and much amusement. Every story needs a Tom. So, anyways, I hope everyone enjoys this chapter. Hopefully the next one will be out soon, but my work hours are going up as the holidays approach, so I make no promises. Thanks for reading, as always, and please keep the reviews coming!

**Chapter Seven**

"Will someone tell me what the hell is going on here?" The farmhand had finally switched back to Basic, instead of whatever unfamiliar language he'd been babbling in moments ago, but he still sounded rather upset as Ahsoka and Anakin stepped back from the embrace and turned to look at the three Terraneans still standing there. "What happened yesterday? Who is this guy? And what the hell is that… that _thing_?" Ahsoka winced slightly as he jabbed a finger in her direction, and Anakin glared darkly at him.

"'Thing'?" he repeated, in a rather 'I'd-better-have-heard-you-wrong' sort of challenging tone, but Manny was already talking over him.

"Calm down, Garvan, you're yellin'," he said, surprisingly calm with all things considered.

"Damn straight I'm yelling!" the man retorted. "There's a red chick with horns standing there hugging on the weird guy in the robe who you were just trying to kick off the property! Man, I take _one_ day off…" He looked between Manny, who was standing with arms crossed and a vague expression of agitation still on his face, and Keida, who was glancing back and forth between all four of them and looking very flustered. "What _is_ it, anyway? When'd you two adopt some mutant kid thing and not tell me?"

Ahsoka wasn't sure exactly whose anger she felt at this description of her. She knew her Master looked clearly upset at it, and she wasn't very pleased either; even Manny looked irritated. "Hey!" She protested, affronted, and Anakin took a step forward, but Manny cut in before either could say anything further.

"She's not a mutant or a thing, Garvan, she's a person, and I'd thank you to watch your tongue 'round people 'fore it gets you in trouble," Manny snapped, glaring at the farmhand. "Calm down an' stop yellin' before all the help comes runnin' to see what you're on about. Last thing we need's a bigger scene bein' made," he muttered.

"I'll stop yelling when someone explains this to me," Garvan retorted, and Ahsoka got the distinct feeling that at this point he was only raising his voice on principle to back up his words rather than out of shock or excitement like before. It was obvious Manny was getting upset about it, and looked about to shout back, but Keida seemed to have regained her composure now enough to interject.

"I think we should take this inside."

"Why would we…" Manny started, but followed her gaze over to Ahsoka – who shifted awkwardly under the stares of all three Terraneans and her Master – and nodded slightly. "Oh. Yeah. Good plan. Let's go inside." And he headed for the house, shooting Garvan a look and then one at Ahsoka – she felt pretty confident in translating it as a 'you're in trouble and we're going to discuss this later' look; she got them enough from Anakin. Keida followed him, and Ahsoka grabbed Anakin's hand and tugged him along towards the house before he could protest, and Garvan trailed after them muttering again in that language Ahsoka didn't know.

This found them now congregated in the den of the house, all feeling a bit awkward. Manny had settled into his armchair, pressing buttons on the control to the Teevee unit without paying much attention at all to what it was doing in response. Keida was bustling around in the kitchen, talking vaguely about where she'd put the cups and if there was time to make tea or if she should stick with juice of some sort. Ahsoka and Anakin had taken up position on the couch, where Anakin was giving her a once-over and both were trying to ignore Garvan's piercing stare from where he stood leaning back against the wall, watching them suspiciously.

"You really look a mess, all bandaged up…"

"I know, but it's not as bad as it looks, really." She ignored Manny's slight scoff; she was getting enough of a look from Anakin as it was. "I'm okay, just a little banged up."

"'A little banged up'? You've got as much a skill for understating as you do for over-exaggerating, you know that?" The sternness in his voice lessened a bit as Ahsoka grinned at him – but only a bit. "If you're still wandering around in bandages it must have been pretty bad. Those don't look like bacta patches." He leaned forward to examine the bandaging on her side.

"Well, that's 'cause they're not. They don't have bacta here."

"What do you mean, they don't have bacta?" Anakin shot her an incredulous look, something between shock and disbelief. She couldn't help but smirk; she knew the feeling. Bacta was _everywhere_.

"Yeah, that's what I said…"

"What the hell's 'bacta'? Sounds disgusting," Garvan cut in. "No wonder we don't have it."

Anakin shot him a look, raising an eyebrow, but chose not to respond, turning his attention back to Ahsoka. "They should take you to a hospital or something, then, where they would have some; I don't like you wandering around hurt." Manny made a sound that might have been a slight laugh at this; Ahsoka would have spoken up to defend them, but Anakin didn't give her time to. "And that leg looks pretty bad, either way. Should you be walking around on that?"

"No, she shouldn't," Manny answered for her, "but it don't stop her, stubborn little thing."

Ahsoka grinned sheepishly while Anakin gave her a pointed look. "She is definitely that." Manny glanced at him sideways with an expression Ahsoka couldn't quite interpret, then looked at her, and she braced herself for the inevitable scolding – likely from both at once.

Thankfully, she was spared the ordeal by Keida's re-entry into the den, carrying a tray holding five glasses of tea, which she proceeded to distribute among them. This done, she settled down in her rocking chair. Ahsoka was struck by the forced casualty as they all silently sipped the drinks; this was somehow very serious, but no one quite wanted to acknowledge it. The quiet quickly became awkward and almost smothering, but she felt she had no right to break it. She did her best not to fidget.

"Well," Manny finally stated, and after the long silence his voice sounded unnaturally loud. "I think some introductions are in order." He looked over at Anakin. "I'm Manarin Tarin. This is my wife, Keida, an' that loudmouth over there's one of our hired help, Garvan Antik."

"'One of the hired help'? Is that it?" Garvan sounded deeply offended, and Ahsoka was a bit amused that he seemed to accept the 'loudmouth' accusation but was upset about this. "I'm in _charge_ of the hired help, thank you very much." Manny and Keida ignored him, so Master and Padawan followed suit.

"Anakin Skywalker," her Master introduced himself a bit curtly; she vaguely hoped they wouldn't think him rude – it was just how he was.

"You already know me," Ahsoka quipped with a smile; Keida's "Of course, dear," was said at the same time as Garvan's, "Well I don't, but no one's thinking of me over here."

Manny sighed irritably. "Garvan, Ahsoka; Ahsoka, Garvan. Happy now?"

"Oh, somewhat there. Now tell me what the hell she is and where she came from; then maybe I'll make it to 'thrilled'," he stated dryly. Ahsoka nearly giggled, but managed to catch herself in time and turn it into a bit of a cough; Anakin shot her a slightly amused look.

"Well, uh, she's…" Manny exchanged a look with Keida; Ahsoka frowned. They didn't want him to know. She could feel it. It wasn't that they didn't trust him exactly – in fact, it was very similar to how she felt about letting _them_ know she was a Jedi, or about the war. It wasn't distrust; it was just the internal feeling that it would be better to keep secrets. "She's… uh…"

"She's from out of town," Keida blurted. Everyone stared at her; even Anakin, who probably had no clue what was going on, knew it sounded ridiculous. "I mean, um, she's from… one of the Arc Islands, you know, out across the Great Sea."

A certain comprehension dawned in Manny's expression. "Yeah," he agreed. "Orphan, we're fosterin' for a while… that new government program thing, ya know. Tryin' to… uh… educate the natives an' all, bring 'em into civilization. She got here yesterday when y'all had the day off; we were gonna get her settled in 'fore doin' any introductions."

Ahsoka could feel Anakin's gaze on her, questioning. _Go along with it,_ she pleaded mentally, hoping the block in the Force wouldn't stop him from hearing her.

"Okay," Garvan said, slowly, "foster kid. Red skin, tribal face paint… Islander. Yep." Ahsoka was suddenly a bit grateful that she was at the very least wearing 'Terranean' clothes, the simple farm clothes, instead of her usual outfit. _Maybe it makes me look a little more normal…_ "So, then, what's with the… horn… things?" He motioned vaguely around his head and Ahsoka tried her best not to feel self-conscious again.

"Headdress," Anakin inserted before anyone could answer. Ahsoka felt a rush of relief; he must have heard her, or at least gotten the general feeling. "It's traditional." She nodded in agreement – well, it was half-true; she _was_ wearing an akul-tooth headdress, which was traditional wear for her people when they earned it. She supposed her montrals and head-tails could pass as some fancy sort of headwear, so long as he didn't look too close.

"Uh-huh. And who're you, then?" Garvan turned his sharp gaze on Anakin.

"Distant cousin of Kei's," Manny offered, while Keida nodded. "We don't know him that well, but he's here visitin'. Wasn't expectin' him to show up today," he glanced at Keida, "'Cause no one thought to tell me. An' you know how I don't like people just showin' up, an' since I didn't recognize him I didn't wanna tell him anythin'… thought he might be an Agent, and you know how I feel about them. Guess he don't like bein' yelled at, either, so we had a bit of a tiff."

"You two really need to get beyond such issues," Keida said casually, "Whatever happened to a simple 'hello' before everyone starts shouting?" Manny and Anakin exchanged glances while Ahsoka kept a straight face with much difficulty, stifling another 'cough'.

"Uh-huh." Garvan spoke in a monotone, making it difficult to tell what he thought or if he was buying the story. "And… they know each other?"

"That's why he's here, actually," Keida answered easily. "He spent time on the Islands working with the kids; we exchanged letters. He's actually the one who suggested the program to me and helped set the whole thing up."

There was a long moment's silence as Garvan looked between the four of them, one eyebrow raised. "Well," he finally said. "Great story, that one. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do, and since it sounds like interruption by Alliance Agents is imminent, I'd better get started. Have fun with your new alien friends while it lasts." And he plunked his empty tea glass down on the table, and then turned and marched for the door, muttering to himself about wastes of time and people falling out of the air in space rubble and why'd they drag him in here anyways when they knew full well he had important things to take care of.

For a second after he left it was quiet, everyone staring after him. Ahsoka broke the silence with a fit of giggles she'd been doing her best to hold in, and then everyone was staring at her. "What? You have to admit it was kind of a funny story."

Manny smirked wryly, leaning back in his chair. "Yeah, well, it was worth a shot. Damn man's too smart for his own good; shoulda known it wouldn't do any good to lie to him. Pro'lly had the whole thing figured out 'fore we even got in here." He looked over at Keida, chuckling. "Good try, though. Arc Islands, I never woulda thought of sayin' she was one o' them redskins."

Keida smiled and shrugged. "It's the first thing that popped into my head. I don't think they're quite so… _deeply_ red," she added with a glance at Ahsoka, "but it was all I could think of."

"What's going on here?" Anakin asked, looking over at Manny before fixing his gaze on Ahsoka. "Why were we feeding him a cover story?"

Ahsoka started to answer, then paused, realizing for the first time exactly how complicated this entire thing was. "Well… it's a long story, Master." Keida and Manny exchanged a look as she glanced over at them. They could answer, of course, but it was clear he was more interested in hearing Ahsoka explain, and she was kind of glad for it – there were things she wanted to discuss with him that they didn't know. But then, she had no right to ask them to leave.

"I should go get the stew cooking if we're going to have it in time for supper," Keida stated in way of excusing herself, standing. When Manny seemed un-inclined to move, she cleared her throat slightly to get his attention and shot him a pointed look as she passed him en route to the kitchen; he sighed heavily.

"Oh, alright. I guess I'd better go make sure Garvan ain't runnin' 'round tellin' everyone we got an alien in the house." He stood and headed for the door, casting a glance back over his shoulder at them before he left. He looked as if he'd like to say something but decided against it, and a moment later the door swung shut again.

Anakin fixed his gaze on Ahsoka again. "Long story, huh? Well, get telling, Snips. Sounds like you've got some explaining to do."

She smiled a bit, despite herself. "Yes, Master." And she settled back on the couch, took a deep breath, and started explaining, hoping she could make the story make sense – because it still didn't quite make sense to her. _With any luck_, she realized, _maybe Master can figure out what exactly it is that's still so… __**wrong**__. _Because the feeling of something being off hadn't gone away when he'd gotten here, not like she'd thought it would. Something wasn't right… but he was here now, so what could be wrong? She hoped he'd know, because she sure hadn't figured it out yet.


	9. Chapter 8

Stang this chapter was hard to write, and I have NO idea why. I think it being Anakin's PoV had something to do with it, but… it was so weird. I knew what I wanted to happen, I just couldn't get it to come out in words, and even now I'm honestly not entirely pleased with it. But I owe you guys a chapter – and it's overdue. I apologize for the long wait, this one just did not want to be written, but here it is. Hopefully the next one will come easier, because I _really_ hate writer's block.

Oh, real quick, to milkduds100. Nope, not a crossover; I made it up. Terrania IS based on Earth, as some people have guessed, but there are some marked differences… you'll see. And, just to clear the waters now, YES, this WILL eventually be Ansoka romance. But, no fear – 1) I am not a mushy romance writer, nor do I think I get 'too detailed' with it – I try to write relationships realistically; and 2) honestly, I don't anticipate any real 'romance' to even BEGIN until the sequel (yep, there's one planned; a series, even, if you all like this one enough to want more!).

Anyways, long author's note, apologies. If you read, please review – come on, people, feedback! For the number of hits I've gotten, I don't have that many reviews, and I really do like to know what you all think. And with that and no further ado (finally, right?), onto the chapter.

**Chapter Eight**

To say Anakin found this entire situation a little annoying was an understatement worthy of his Padawan's habitual optimism. He must have had Ahsoka explain everything to him ten times in the past three days, and it didn't make much more sense than it had the first time she'd told him about it. A planet he'd never heard of before? One that knew nothing of the workings of the Galaxy, nothing of the War, despite being positioned in the middle of it all? One that was so technologically backwards, and yet had been somehow guarded by those fancy ships? These were only a couple of the reasons he didn't like it.

And these people they'd wound up with. Okay, so maybe he couldn't really say much against Keida and Manarin directly. They'd been nice to Ahsoka, certainly, and she seemed fond of them… although, with her, it was hard to find the person she _didn't_ like. Even if he still felt irritated that they hadn't had better medical supplies – he didn't like seeing her limping, or the knowledge that she was going to more than likely come away from this with scars – he couldn't really blame them for that. They were friendly enough, he supposed, and hospitable, but… well, he wasn't sure what the 'but' was. They seemed sincere, even trustworthy. All he knew was that Ahsoka felt the 'but' too – she'd proven that.

He'd been… 'angry' wasn't quite the right word, but it was a good enough description of how he'd felt, when she'd told him they thought she was his slave girl. He wasn't sure who he'd been angry _at_, but he had known for sure that the first order of business would be to march right to them and clear up this confusion right away. He still wasn't sure how she'd kept him from doing so – perhaps it was her statement that they probably didn't know what a Jedi was so they wouldn't really understand anyway; or maybe it was her admitting that she herself didn't want to entrust the information to them, she who trusted _everyone_ who was presented to her as an ally. Whatever it was, it had still taken her a lot of work to get him to begrudgingly agree not to argue their conceptions, at least not yet. "Servant, then, if we've got to. I will _not_ act like you're a slave." He knew she hadn't quite understood – they'd acted it before, hadn't they, and besides wasn't it basically the same thing? – but she'd agreed. However, it was still a bit of a tense issue between them, and both knew it.

Of course the next order of business to him had been to pick out that something was missing. "Where's Artoo?" And she'd blinked, and looked surprised, and seemed to remember for the first time that he _had_ been in the pod with her, hadn't he?

"Well, they don't have any droids here, and Keida said they didn't see anything else at the pod… maybe he… wandered off? Looking for me or something, after they found me?" Anakin hadn't quite liked the idea, but neither of them could think of anything else – he wasn't here with Ahsoka, and he hadn't been on the pod when Anakin got there. It hadn't taken a long time at all for him to decide they would go look for the little droid – once Ahsoka was fit to. He couldn't really be mad at her for not thinking of Artoo, all things considered, but there was no way he was going to just 'forget' the droid.

Ahsoka had been stuck to him like a mynock to a power coupling ever since he'd shown up. Anakin couldn't say he minded much – after feeling like he'd nearly lost her, he was more comfortable when he could see her, keep an eye on her. Especially with what he'd heard, with these 'Agent' people after her. He'd given her back her lightsaber, so it wasn't like she was defenseless if something _did_ happen, but… better safe than sorry, right? And with that farmhand wandering around, shoving himself into their business whenever he could, he felt even more need to be 'safe' instead of 'sorry'.

That goes to the matter of Garvan. The man… had not endeared himself to Anakin at all. He found the farmhand irritating, to say the least. Although he claimed he had not told anyone else the 'little secret', and Keida and Manny assured Anakin he wouldn't lie, Garvan seemed to take his position as 'head farmhand' quite seriously – which meant, in essence, he felt it was his right to know everything that was going on, whether it involved him or not. He seemed to be rather affronted that he hadn't been told the entire situation from the start, and thus was trying rather hard to compensate for this by making sure he didn't 'miss anything' now. Irritatingly enough, that seemed to mean he was determined to invite himself into the house to 'keep an eye on the aliens', and to follow Anakin and Ahsoka everywhere when they were able to leave the house, to make sure they 'didn't mess with anything'.

Anakin was glad they _were_ able to leave the house, if only at certain times – in the evenings, after the farmhands had left. He didn't like feeling imprisoned, trapped in the building. Although, truthfully, _he_ could come and go as he pleased, but he didn't feel right leaving Ahsoka cooped up while he wandered, so he tended to stay in with her much of the day. It had only been three days and he was beginning to feel a bit trapped, but if he let himself stop and think about it, he imagined Ahsoka probably felt it even more; after all, she'd been here for over a week, and she was always one to get a little stir-crazy when forced to stay in one place for too long without doing anything. So when Manny suggested an evening 'tour' around the farm as a way to get them out of the house, it was difficult to discern who was more eager about it – Anakin, who wanted to get a good look around this new place in the hopes of figuring out more about their situation; or Ahsoka, who just wanted to do _something_ that wasn't sitting around waiting for something to happen.

The farm was a pretty simple place. Not too much that Anakin wouldn't expect from… well, a farm. The main house, a large garden, an orchard, fields… they had a lot of land, but then as he'd discovered, the Plains provided a lot of it. Stables, pastures, a house for the farmhands – "Most of 'em go home nights, but some stay… an' all of 'em go home weekends, 'cept Garvan, he dang near lives here. Lets him be on-hand in case anythin' ever goes on where he's needed." This was as close as Manny had come to explaining Garvan's constant presence, and he sounded as if he himself wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not.

The most interesting thing for Anakin, though, was looking around inside the barn. It wasn't the barn itself that was so interesting, but what it contained – not the food stores, but the vehicles and equipment. He'd never dealt with this sort of technology exactly; the vehicles were primitive, compared to what he was used to, but they were innovative and _different_, and he wanted to examine them, take them apart and put them back together and figure out how they worked and what they did – especially the strange cloud-harvester, a sort of hovercraft combined with some sort of plow and a strange vacuum-like apparatus that altogether intrigued him and had him asking Manny a string of questions while circling the thing and examining it from all angles, trying to learn as much as he could without actually working on the vehicle himself.

He was only distracted from the harvester when Manny, apparently picking up on his technological interests, directed him over to the Kirotin-refining equipment. If their technology was backwards in most everything else, at least _here_ it was up to speed. Anakin knew little about Kirotin except that it was the weird, tasteless yellow powder that Keida added to all the food and claimed was healthy, but he would learn more. He peered into a container filled with an orange-ish liquid while Manny explained how liquid Kirotin was more potent than the powder and used by medical facilities and the military, and how it was possible to get crystal Kirotin but it was so strong as to be considered a stimulant drug and was illegal. As interesting as this might be, Anakin was more intrigued by all the gears and tubes and chambers and equipment that was required to turn gas into liquid and then into powder and manage both at the same time without messing up the delicate process and making the result worthless.

Ahsoka, on the other hand, wasn't quite so intrigued by the technology. She'd stuck around for the beginnings of the discussion, but at some point she'd grown bored with the tech-speak between the two men and wandered off to some other corner of the barn. Anakin had vaguely noticed, but as long as she didn't leave the building it didn't concern him much, and he was admittedly distracted – until he heard her exclamation from the far corner.

"Artooie!" Anakin's head snapped up and he had turned and headed in her direction in a moment, cutting Manny off midsentence, locating her behind some crates. "What are you doing to him? Stop!" And she moved towards the table and half-pushed a startled Garvan out of the way and looked worriedly at the little droid that sat among the tools and gadgets scattered across the wooden surface. Anakin whirled on the surprised farmhand.

"What'd you do to my droid?" He snapped at Garvan, who held an oddly-shaped wrench in one hand and something that looked like a small, pointed crowbar in the other and wore a pair of what he could only guess were magnifying goggles; the overall picture might have been funny under any other circumstances, but he was in no mood to be amused. Artoo was deactivated, and Anakin scanned him for any signs of damage – _he'd __**better**__ not be damaged, or…_ he wasn't sure what the 'or' was.

"'Droid'? What's that, a brand? If you mean that thing," he pointed at the droid, "nothing, unfortunately. I was trying to figure out where you put the records, before I was so rudely interrupted." Garvan spoke with an infuriating casualness, and looked over at Manny, who had followed Anakin and now stood looking rather confused. "Don't know where you got this thing, but it's the most inefficient record player I've ever seen; can't even figure out how to turn the thing on… hey, hey, don't touch that, you'll break it!" He interrupted himself, turning to Ahsoka who had shifted Artoo on the table and was reaching to reactivate him; Garvan grabbed her shoulder and tugged her away. "Little aliens shouldn't mess with things they don't understand," he said to her, speaking slowly as if he were scolding a very young child; she looked immediately and deeply insulted.

"Look who's talking!" she exclaimed, pulling away from him and moving back to Artoo, but he grabbed hold of her arm to pull her away again, and Anakin felt a jolt of anger only adding to what was already present.

"Don't touch her!" Anakin ordered fiercely, a bit surprised at the amount of threat that made it into his tone – but it did the job; Garvan let go of her quickly. He noticed a flicker of something like surprise in Ahsoka's expression as she glanced at him, and it was enough to convince him to let the anger ebb a bit. He moved to place himself between Ahsoka and Garvan, while she turned her attention back to Artoo. A few seconds later there was a drowsy-sounding beep as Artoo was activated, followed by a chirp of greeting. Ahsoka sighed in relief.

"Hi, Artooie."

Anakin shot one more glare at Garvan before turning his attention to Artoo as well. The droid chirped another greeting and he couldn't help but smile. "Hey there, buddy. You okay?" An affirmative beep, but that wasn't quite enough; he gave the droid a once-over, searching for any damage that the farmhand might have caused.

"Weird little noisemaker, isn't it? Good thing the kid didn't mess it up. Well now that it's on, where do you put the records anyways?"

"It's not a record player, you idiot," Manny stated, sounding exasperated, "S'their… robot… thing, that they been missin'. Where the hell'd you get it?"

"I don't know, it was just sitting in that corner over there behind the crates," Garvan answered, still infuriatingly casual. "I figured it was a new piece of equipment, and it's my responsibility to know how to use all the equipment, of course."

"You're lucky you didn't break him," Anakin snapped, still angry but soothed a bit by the fact that except for one missing panel and a few dents and scratches, Artoo seemed relatively unscathed. He located said panel lying on the table among the tools, and turned to snatch the wrench out of Garvan's hand and went about re-attaching the metal plate.

"Well of course I didn't break it," the man retorted, as if the very idea was ludicrous. "You'd think I didn't know how to do my job, the way you all carry on… you're lucky the child didn't break it, that's what I think."

Anakin had expected a retort from Ahsoka, so he was a bit surprised when she didn't say anything right away. He looked over at her; she was gazing between Artoo and Garvan with a thoughtful expression on her face. "How'd you not know how to turn him on, if you managed to turn him off?"

"What?"

"He was deactivated," she repeated, "it's the same thing both ways. If you deactivated him to try and… whatever you were trying to do," she stated, half-glaring at him, "then how to turn him back on should have been obvious. If you're so good at these sort of things like you say." And there was that snippy tone that Anakin was used to; he grinned slightly.

"I didn't turn the thing off," Garvan argued, resuming his 'speaking-to-a-small-child' tone that he always seemed to use when addressing Ahsoka. "I found the little gadget sitting over there," and he pointed, "in the corner of the barn, see, and I brought it over here, just as it was, to examine. Understand?"

She frowned, and Anakin could tell she was doing her very best not to snap at him. "Well, then, how'd he get here?" But she was done talking to Garvan, she looked over at Manny, and then at Anakin.

"I dunno, Red. Didn't see the thing when I was in here yesterday… or anytime before, for that matter. Was even in here earlier today and didn't spot it. An' I think I woulda noticed somethin' like that," Manny admitted.

Three pairs of eyes turned back to Garvan, and he shook his head again. "Don't blame me. Said it once, not going to say it again."

Manny frowned, then sighed slightly. "What'd you call him, 'Artooie'? S'that his brand or his name?"

"Well, both, sort of. His name's Artoo-Detoo; he's an R2 unit. We call him Artoo for short… well, I call him Artooie," she explained, looking over at the droid fondly, and he gave a happy whistle in response, returning the sentiment. She tilted her head to look up at Anakin. "Well, that's one problem down, then, right Master? We found Artoo."

Anakin looked at her, nodding slowly, but wasn't quite able to keep himself from frowning. He glared at Garvan, who stood with his arms crossed and looking rather irritated at having his new 'gadget' claimed; and glanced with new suspicion at Manny, who was looking at Artoo with interest; and then turned to lift Artoo down from the table carefully, exchanging a quick sideways glance with his Padawan and noting, with a bit of relief, that despite her words she shared his feelings. Droids didn't just _appear_, deactivated, in barn corners. He'd gotten here – and turned off – somehow, which meant… well, it meant one of these two was lying. Anakin had his suspicions as to which one, but with the Force so hazy he had little to go on _but_ suspicion.

But this wasn't the time or place for an interrogation, and besides, it would be better to get somewhere relatively private – somewhere they could discuss openly, and find out what Artoo could tell them. Ahsoka seemed to decide this at about the same time he did. "My leg hurts," she announced, "is it alright if I head back to the house?"

"'Course, Red, I told ya you shoulda brought the crutch; you're still healin'," Manny sounded worried, like he always did, but now Anakin found himself wondering in the back of his mind if maybe he wasn't just _acting_ concerned. "Get on back, I gotta wrap up some stuff in here and shut the equipment down." He shot a look at Garvan, who had gone back to the table and was tinkering with one of the other myriad devices as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Right, Snips, sooner you heal the better. C'mon, Artoo." Ignoring Garvan, who was muttering something about 'why'd they let the kid out anyways', he turned to head out of the barn. A part of him wanted to stay, circle back around and find a window and listen in on whatever conversation might happen, but a quick glance told him the windows were all closed for the night, and he decided that chances are he'd get more information from Artoo than from Manny and Garvan – the two didn't seem to get along terribly well, or to talk much to each other. _But maybe that's an act, too._ He glanced behind him to where Ahsoka was following, one hand resting lightly on Artoo's domed top; meeting her gaze for a moment, he saw his own confusion and uncertainty reflected in her eyes. He sighed. It seemed these people weren't as trustworthy as he'd thought.


	10. Chapter 9

Haha, WIN! My goal was to get this out before I had to work today, and as of when I am typing this author's note, I have done so by 45 minutes. Yay for me! Anyways. This one was certainly easier than the last one. Finally, the plot's starting to move. Good feeling. With any luck it'll keep flowing easily and I'll be able to keep the chapters coming decently quickly. Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter! I feel a bit better about how it turned out now. XD Please keep the reviews coming; I love knowing what you guys are thinking. Special thanks to Darth Comrade – at this rate, we're gonna become review buddies! – and of course MyDelerium – gotta get maintenance to fix the coffee ground issue, dear, 'cause if it happens while I'm there this holiday I'm going to laugh at you. Coffee grounds and garbage disposals do not mix. And now onto the chapter, with one last reminder that I love reviews! Enjoy!

**Chapter Nine**

Ahsoka lowered herself stiffly to sit on the edge of the bed, biting back a hiss of pain as she shifted to stretch her leg a bit. It might have been an excuse to get back inside, but it hadn't been a lie – the injured leg was still rather sore. She leaned down to rub it as Anakin closed the door behind him and began to pace, leaving Artoo to settle himself by the edge of the room's small desk, situated so that both of them were easily in view. For a long moment there was silence but for Anakin's footsteps on the wooden floor.

"I wish we could lock the door," he finally muttered, sounding as if it were half to himself. The door was notably sans lock, an issue he had mentioned a time or three before.

"Well, it's not our house," she reasoned in response; the same thing she always said. "Besides, this is Manny's study when it's not being used as a spare room… I guess studies don't usually need to be locked." She was a bit surprised to find that she had to force a smile. "Besides, everyone knocks before they come in… everyone except you, that is." It was a slight attempt at teasing, but he didn't seem to be in the mood for banter.

"That's not the point. There's no privacy. We're always in this house, usually in this room, and we can't even lock the door for a little privacy to talk. For all we know they're always listening to us."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Oh, yes, they've got the room bugged, I'm sure. Probably security cameras, too, while they're at it. You'd better scan the room, Artooie, make sure we aren't being spied on." Artoo picked up on the sarcasm in her tone and gave an amused whistle, but Anakin frowned at her.

"I'm serious, Ahsoka. There's something going on here, and we have no idea how much they know. Or which of them is lying."

She frowned as well. He was right, she had to admit it. Now she finally had a _reason_ for her continued feeling that something very wrong was going on – but she wished she didn't. Someone was lying, it was the only explanation, and she didn't want to think that. She opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a soft patting sound at the door. They both turned to look at it, then Ahsoka smirked slightly. "See, even Cerano knocks."

Anakin rolled his eyes slightly as she got to her feet and moved to crack the door open so that the creature could slink in. He meowed up at her, then hopped up on the bed, waiting for her to close the door and sit down beside him before curling up in her lap, purring; she scratched behind his ears down to his collar, making him purr louder. At Anakin's look, she shrugged one shoulder. "If I leave him out there knocking he'll draw attention – Keida will wonder why I'm not letting him in." She found it a bit upsetting how easily this came to her – the thought that they had to act, be normal, not arouse suspicion; this feeling of distrust. "I always let him in." Anakin resumed his pacing, and Cerano's blue eyes followed him back and forth.

"What if they're telling the truth?" Ahsoka finally blurted. "They haven't done anything to make it so we shouldn't trust them." Had they? Even as she said it, her mind questioned it; little inconsistencies, that feeling of wrongness that she couldn't explain. Did she trust them? Hadn't _she_ been lying to _them_ practically from the start, changing and withholding information? Why would she do that if she really did trust them? "Maybe we're just being… paranoid or something."

Anakin gave her a look between hesitance and exasperation. "It's pretty obvious that someone's hiding something, Ahsoka. It's not paranoia, it's facts. Artoo got there somehow." She frowned. That was true. She'd been in that barn four days ago, and she was almost certain that Artoo hadn't been there then. "Can you tell us what happened, Artoo?"

The droid's whistle sounded noticeably apologetic. He had very little information for them, and it took a while of questions and answers to work it all out and piece together the beeps and whistles into a full story. The droid recalled the pod crash, and hadn't been able to get out of the pod and had been stuck there for about a day, he estimated – "Aww, Artooie, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave you there." He'd heard the noises of someone coming, but it had been night, and he hadn't seen who it was who got into the pod before he'd been zapped – some sort of electric jolt, effectively shutting him down. Next thing he knew he was on that table in the barn.

Anakin frowned. He'd never stopped pacing; it was making Ahsoka nervous, watching him go back and forth. "Well, that confirms it. Something's going on here, and we're being lied to." He finally paused, crossing his arms. "Takes better technology than I've seen in this house to zap a droid like that, but from what they've got in that barn… and that gives us over a week where we don't know where he was, and then tonight he shows up in there."

Ahsoka shook her head slowly. "But, Master… why would they lie? What would they be hiding?"

"I don't know, Ahsoka, that's what we're going to have to find out." He finally ceased the relentless pacing – much to her relief – and leaned back against the desk beside Artoo. "Between this and those ships that shot us down in the first place, I'd say whatever's going on here's probably not good, as far as we're concerned."

She still didn't want to believe it; her heart argued the supposed logic in her mind. "Well… maybe one of the farmhands got Artoo! And Manny and Keida didn't know about it. So they're not lying, and it's one of the workers who's being not good… it'd be really easy for Garvan to be lying, wouldn't it? _He's_ the one who had Artoo in the first place." But, as much as she hated to admit it, she thought he'd been sincere – at least, it hadn't _felt_ like he was lying. But with the Force as messed up as it was here, it hadn't felt like _either_ of them had been lying, and she had no way of knowing if the feeling was accurate.

"Maybe. But we can't make assumptions based solely on what we'd like to think." He smirked dryly. "Don't get me wrong, he's definitely a prime suspect. But it doesn't all add up to just be him."

"Why not?"

"His reaction to you – and to me." She shot him a questioning look. "Either he was genuinely surprised to see you that day and really had no clue what you were, or he's an amazing actor. Fuzzy or not, I could still tell he was shocked. Plus, there's no way they could have known I was going to show up that day at that time, but the general reactions made sense; if he was the only one in on whatever this secret is, I'd expect that all to have gone a bit differently." His eyes met hers, and she knew that he understood exactly what it was about this that she didn't want to believe. "If he's involved, we have to consider that Manny and Keida are too."

Ahsoka sighed. "But… why? What would they be hiding? And… well, _how_? I mean…" Now it was her turn to set Cerano aside, stand, and start pacing the length of the room. "If they've got technology like ours, then where are they hiding it? I've practically lived in this house for over a week now and the most advanced thing I've seen is that Teevee droid. Even giving the time they had while I was out of it, I'd expect it would take a long time to set something like this up. That's a pretty elaborate act, if we assume they're just _pretending_ to be this… technologically backwards. And they're _good_ at it; they've done nothing to make me think that they're used to more advanced technology than we're seeing. I mean, Manny thought half of what I told him about the stuff we've got was made up or impossible or something. And Garvan thought Artooie was a 'record player', whatever that is. Yeah, the stuff they've got in the barn is more advanced, but even then it's all farm equipment; nothing really weird or suspicious." She turned on her heel and paced back the other way.

"And why would they lie to me? They saved my life. Keida spent days making sure I was okay, and Manny hid me from the Agents when they showed up the day before you got here – he _lied_ to them for me, to make sure they wouldn't find me. Why would they do all that if they had some… evil plot going on? I don't know about Garvan, but Keida and Manny… it doesn't make sense." She spun again, now facing him. "_None_ of this makes sense. How do they not know about… about _anything_? And even if we presume they _do_ know and they're lying, why would they, and how'd they pull it off so… convincingly? I just… ugh!" She threw up her hands, reaching the end of her rant. "This is so irritating! Nothing makes sense without the Force." Anakin had been gazing thoughtfully to one side as she talked, listening but thinking too, but when she said this he snapped his head up, looking at her wide-eyed as if she'd just said something incredibly insightful. "…What?"

"That's it, that's the question."

"'What' is the question?" she asked with a slight grin.

He shot her a look, something between 'stop kidding around' and 'do I really have to explain this?', but she knew he was going to explain his thoughts either way. "No, Snips. The Force. We're cut off from it, somehow. Why? How? You're right – things don't make sense without it. It's throwing us off, confusing us. Making us think differently, act differently; making us unsure of ourselves and our instincts. Without the Force to rely on, we're more likely to miss things, question ourselves… that's the main issue here."

"So… you're saying that it's… intentional? Like, something is deliberately blocking our Force sense in order to throw us off?" She wasn't sure what to think about that. "Master… what could do that?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I've heard that some creatures are able to disrupt the flow of the Force, and some powerful Force-users can turn it on others to confuse or manipulate them… but to do it constantly like this…"

"I doubt Manny or Keida qualify in that category, honestly… I'd think we'd be able to sense _that_, at least. Same for Garvan." Anakin nodded.

"Yeah, maybe." He sighed. "I don't know what's causing it, but I'd be willing to bet that that's the key to this whole thing. We figure that out, we'll solve it."

"Or at least have another piece to the puzzle," she agreed, sitting back down on the bed and stroking Cerano's back. "But what can we do about it?"

"Start investigating. We don't know enough of what's going on here. It's time to start asking questions, getting answers… tomorrow I'm going to take a closer look around that barn, I think. I want to see exactly what sort of technology they _do_ have access to here."

Ahsoka nodded. "I can start asking Keida and Manny questions," she offered, "see what I can get them to tell me." As much as she didn't want to think that they could find anything incriminating out about the couple, she had to admit it felt somehow good to have a goal, to be doing _something_. Anakin seemed to agree; he was smiling as he sat down beside her.

"It's a start, at least." She nodded.

"We'll figure this out, Master. We're Jedi, it's what we do." Anakin looked over at her, and she grinned. "Besides, now we're all together again. Bad guys don't have a chance." Anakin chuckled and returned her grin, and Artoo gave an affirmative beep, and for the first time since finding the droid in the barn she began to feel confident again. One way or another, this was going to turn out alright – she could feel it.


	11. Chapter 10

Wow this took a while. Why this was so tricky to write I have no idea. O,o Although, I do have an excuse… couple, in fact… exams, then the holidays, and then I actually moved. I live in a different state now. Moved in with my best friend. So I've been busy… hopefully some of the 'busy' has died down and I can settle in to start writing again. We'll see. ~_~ Anyways, here's chapter ten. Hopefully it's… decent. Not exactly an action chapter. Bit of character history and all, sort of another 'necessary filler to get the plot going' one, which may be why it was tricky for me… eh, whatever. Pretty soon things will pick up… I have plans! Always good. Anyways, as always I love reviews, and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter Ten**

Somehow, Ahsoka hadn't expected 'spy work' to feel so… deceptive. With every object she looked a bit more closely at and every question she put forth, something in the back of her mind wondered how she could expect to trust these people if she was doing stuff like this so that they couldn't trust _her_ – but she already distrusted them; only a little bit, but that was enough to count.

"I never got the feelin' you were so interested in technology," Manny commented, glancing up from his book – it was somehow odd to her to see people reading books instead of datapads, but there was a quaint charm to an old ink-and-paper book – and looking over to where Ahsoka sat on the floor, examining the knobs and buttons on the Teevee, trying to figure out exactly how this thing worked. "Seemed like that was more your… _master's_ thing."

"Master does love anything mechanical," she agreed, pressing one of the buttons and glancing at the unit's viewscreen to see how it would respond. "I guess I picked up a bit from him." In truth, she'd figured out little about the strange little machine – she was starting to wonder if it was even a droid unit at all. And unless there were hidden panels somewhere, it didn't do anything but picture and sound. Nothing too complex here. _Nothing suspicious._ It was both a relief and an irritation; she wanted to believe there was nothing suspicious to find, but at the same time she wanted to find _something_, just to have an answer. She scooted around, maneuvering between the unit and the wall to examine the thing from the back. Master Skywalker would be so much better at this… but he was searching the barn. And with all the equipment in there… well, she figured he'd be there for a good long time.

"So, what's your Artoo here do?" Manny asked after a moment, motioning to the little droid who was settled a few feet from her; he beeped in response to his name.

"He's an astromech droid," she responded distractedly, "R2-series."

"I have no idea what that means, Red."

"Oh. Right." She looked up from her examination of the cable that connected the Teevee unit to the wall – a charge cable of some sort? Did it need constant charging, something this small? How primitive… "He's a diagnostic and repair unit. Mechanic, fixes things, monitors stuff on the ship… can do some navigation stuff… we couldn't fly without him. Right, Artooie?" The droid gave a pleased chirp at this assessment of his usefulness. It took Ahsoka only a few seconds to recall that she was the one who was supposed to be asking questions. "Don't you have any droids to do stuff? I mean, they're not just space-flight units… there are medical droids, service droids, protocol droids…" she sat up on her knees so that she could see Manny over the top of the Teevee. "Battle droids. All sorts of droids."

"Yeah? We don't have any. Some high-tech places got robots an' stuff, but from what I've heard they'd be nothing compared to this little guy." He grinned at her. "Too bad it's gotta be all secret; sounds like we're real behind. I'd love to have 'bots to run everythin' for me. Save me a lot of work."

She gazed at him for a moment, trying hard as she could to figure out if he was lying or not. "Yeah," she finally answered non-committaly, "droids can be really useful, sometimes. Well, most of them." Battle droids she wasn't so fond of. Giving up on the hope of finding out anything useful from examining the Teevee unit, she slid out from behind it and dusted herself off. Or, well, tried to – it had been pretty dusty back there.

"So, uh…" Question, question, think of a useful question. A non-suspicious and yet information-getting question. "How long have you lived on the farm here?" She could have done better than that. But you had to start somewhere.

"This here one? 'Round thirty-five years now since I last moved in. 'Fore this I had a smaller one, there for about another twenty years or so. An' I grew up on this here one an' worked here with my parents for a long time, then inherited it now. Altogether I've lived here most of my life – don't even make me count that many years." Manny chuckled slightly. "S'home here, always will be. Guess I'm just an old farm boy at heart."

Ahsoka smiled slightly. "You've never wanted to do anything else?"

"Nope. Even when I was a kid. Always liked farm life – still do. I know most kids flip-flop between a buncha grandiose ideas of what they wanna be when they're older an' all that 'fore they settle on somethin', but I always knew I was gonna have a farm, jus' like my parents, an' ol' Gramps 'fore them."

For some reason, this sparked an odd twinge in Ahsoka's mind. Had she ever 'flip-flopped'? No, she didn't think she had – she'd always wanted to be a Jedi, ever since Master Plo found her. What else was there for her to want? "Well, sometimes something's just destiny – what you're meant to do. And I guess you know it when you find it. Just takes some people longer than others."

Manny seemed amused by her assessment. "Maybe so. What about you, kid? You figured out your 'destiny' yet?"

She smiled, thinking of her Master and the Temple and her training to be a Jedi Knight. "Yep," she stated, completely sure of herself, "I'm exactly where I need to be."

Manny raised an eyebrow. "Really?" He queried, glancing pointedly around the house, and she blinked and then laughed.

"Well, okay, this pit stop wasn't exactly planned, but… everything happens for a reason, right?"

Manny looked back down at her. "I dunno 'bout that, myself. That a personal belief, or a cultural one?"

Ahsoka shrugged one shoulder. "Both, sort of, I guess…" It was a Jedi belief, she supposed. That made it a personal belief too, even if she was still working a bit at remembering it, sometimes. "Master Skywalker says nothing's ever an accident or coincidence. Maybe I'm supposed to be here for some reason, something I don't know yet." That was a slightly comforting thought, and one that didn't hit her as suddenly as she'd expected – saying it felt oddly like confirming a long-held suspicion rather than realizing a new fact. "Besides," she added, smiling over at him, "if I'd never landed here, I'd never have met you and Keida. So it's a good thing."

He looked momentarily surprised at this, then smiled; his usual grin. "If you say so, Red." After a pause, he added, "I'm kinda glad you showed up too, I guess. For what it's worth," and she didn't think she could have smiled any bigger if she'd tried. She got to her feet, brushing off the last bits of dust from crawling about behind the Teevee, and headed to sit beside him on the couch.

"So, what about Keida?" she asked after a moment, thinking it might not hurt to get back to asking questions. "Did she grow up on farms too?"

"Not in the least. I met her in Cascada – biggest city in these parts – when I was makin' a delivery once. She was shoppin' in the market where I was sellin' my crops to." Manny smiled a bit at the memory. "After the first time we met… we jus' kept on meetin'. She'd make sure she came shoppin' on the days I made deliveries. Then we stared arrangin' to meet other times… then she came t'visit the farm here… an' the rest, I guess, is history. She's a city girl by birth, but she took to the farm right well – says she figures she's always been a farm girl at heart." He chuckled slightly.

Ahsoka smiled. It sounded a 'classic' romance, like the stories for Younglings that she used to read in the Archives when she finally grew bored of studying. How could she be suspicious of these people? They were so nice… and they'd saved her life. Maybe Skyguy was wrong – or maybe it _was_ just one of the farmhands, alone, if there had to be a bad guy. Did there _have_ to be a bad guy? Well if there did, she knew who she suspected.

"What about Garvan?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "He seems… interesting."

Manny chuckled. "That's an understatement." He shook his head. "I guess I should apologize for him, huh? He's… I dunno. He's difficult, I guess, before you get to know him. Still difficult when you do, but you get used to him. I've known Garvan for years… he's dependable, good at his work… and he ain't as cold as he seems, really. I'd call him a friend, if it came down to it." He looked over at her, shrugging. "He ain't been treatin' you or Anakin quite right, I guess, but he don't know you, and… well, I mean, it ain't every day we get a couple aliens visitin'." Artoo beeped, and he grinned. "And their droid, can't forget that. Sad thing is he probably _did_ think you were some sorta record player, Artoo."

Ahsoka nodded slowly. "It's alright, I guess. Understandable." She wished it _was_ understandable. Things would be easier if all of this was just understandable.

"Speakin' of Garvan," Manny stated, moving to stand, "It's gettin' late. I'd better go help him bring the Eqquli, or he'll be complainin' 'bout havin' to do it all himself an' not havin' time to get other stuff finished."

He headed for the door; she waited for it to close behind him before sighing heavily. "Well… stang. I don't think I found out anything that answers any of our questions." Artoo made a chirping noise that sounded almost like a sigh as well, and she smiled slightly. "Maybe Master found something."

Ahsoka stood and wandered to the bookshelf, scanning it for a moment before locating the novel she'd been slowly working her way through. She'd always loved reading, and there really was something… nice, about an ink-and-paper copy in hand, rather than reading on a datapad. Old-fashioned, quaint, but enjoyable. With little else to do she settled onto the floor, leaning back against Artoo, and flipped to the page she'd left off on.

It was easy to get lost in a book, and she'd always had a particular skill for it. She hadn't even heard Keida come in, until she spoke, standing in the kitchen doorway. "Is Manny in here with you?"

"No," she responded, a bit distractedly, "he's out bringing in the Eqquli for the night."

"Oh. Darn." Keida sighed, and Ahsoka tore her eyes from her book to look up at her.

"Did you need him?"

"Oh, not really, dear. I'm just making a pie; I was going to ask him to run to the orchard and get some apples for me. I should have checked before I started, I don't have enough…"

Ahsoka smiled slightly, marking her spot and closing the book. "I can do that."

"Oh, no, that's alright… it's already dark out, and your leg…"

"No, really, it's nothing," Ahsoka insisted. "I have good low-light vision, and my leg's feeling better today – in fact, it'd probably be good to stretch it a bit." Keida smiled at her.

"Well, thank you, dear. I only need a couple… three or four should do it."

Ahsoka nodded and smiled, heading for the door. Short walk, couple apples, and there would be pie tonight instead of having to wait for tomorrow – that was temptation enough, she'd admit. And maybe she'd find Anakin on the way; she was eager to hear if he'd found out anything. Any step closer to solving this mystery would be a welcome one – though some part of her still wasn't sure exactly what the mystery was that they needed to solve, anymore.


	12. Chapter 11

Yay for decently quick updates. Well, this one's short. And probably confusing. Don't worry… you're supposed to be confused. :P No, seriously. New PoV here. Finally I can kick off the _actual_ plot. Originally I was going to skip this little 'intro/filler' chapter, but I was talked into doing it if only to add suspense and give a bit of insight into some things. I'm not sure how pleased I am with it, and I kind of hate posting such a tiny chapter, but here you go. Hopefully the next chapter will be out quick enough to make up for the tininess or this one. XD Enjoy, and please review!

**Chapter Eleven**

Len Sarus reclined back against his speeder. He was bored. One could hardly blame him. How long could you stare at a farm through binoculars and not start to find it monotonous? It wasn't like they did anything interesting. I mean, what, was he supposed to _expect_ them to let the thing out and wandering? No one was that stupid – it could run off!

He was a bit irritated, too. Then again, neither could one blame him for that. Four years university, two grad school, three at a prestigious police academy, hired as an Agent right out of that, trained with the best of them – and he gets assigned to what? Alien hunting. How many years did one have to work in collections before they got promoted to higher up positions? Guard, or transport, or processing, even camp detail… _anything_ but collection. He was so _sick_ of alien hunting.

Then again, it's not really a hunt if you didn't have to work for it, was it? No. He wasn't here on a hunch, they weren't randomly tracking the creature – no, that's what Interceptors were for, finding the Invaders, reporting it, delivering it. And luckily, there was an Interceptor on the farm – a long shot that seemed to have proven worth it, even if this one had been tricky to place (or so he'd heard; he hadn't been involved in that). So he wasn't really hunting. He _knew_ the thing was there. It was just a matter of waiting for it to be delivered… and the Interceptor said that would happen tonight.

He wondered exactly what he'd be dealing with this time. He'd questioned the Interceptor, of course. Standard fare; he had to know what to expect. The more he'd learned, the more he'd begun to worry that the Interceptor would pull out of the bargain – this Invader was humanoid, which while most desirable were also the toughest to nab. No extra limbs, no fur, looked almost Terranean in feature. Strange-looking when you got down to it, but entirely sentient, and spoke Galactic Basic. It had been hurt, they'd had to nurse it back to health. It had a name, had a story. It was friendly, it was trusting – it was even a _kid_, they'd claimed. Part of the Interceptor's job was to make sure that the ones they caught were healthy and fit, and to ensure they didn't feel threatened and thought they were safe so that they'd be easier to manipulate, easier to nab, and, well… doing that for one like this was prime material for guilt to kick in – he'd seen it with the humanoids before many times. Then things got so complicated – they lost more Interceptors that way, trying to protect their aliens when the Agents came for them. Lost more Invaders that way too, when they fought back. It was messy business, and he didn't want to deal with that here.

But he'd been well assured he didn't have anything to worry about. Hadn't he just finished talking to the Interceptor, set up the capture in full? This should be an easy one, really. No, he didn't have anything to worry about. After all, when it came down to it, 'cute kid' didn't count for anything. "She's just some alien slave girl," the Interceptor had said. Well, that was just perfect. 'Some alien slave girl' would work out just fine.

He looked up at the sky – the sun had gone down; now the only light came from the Aurora overhead. Perfect – it was about time now. Len picked up his binoculars again and trained them on the farm. He'd have to be alert and ready, but he wasn't worried – he'd done this before. By morning he'd have this Invader packed off to the nearest camp and be glad to be done with it. After this one, he decided, he'd start bugging the Sergeant for a promotion. He figured he'd earned one by now.


	13. Author's Note 2

AN: Okay, this feels kind of stupid after my last posted chapter was an Author's Note and that was literally years ago. Ugh. But unfortunately this is where I've come to for this story.

I'm still a big Star Wars fan, and Clone Wars fan. I still love it all and I still like and am proud of this story. Life just decided to smack me in the face for... a few years straight. I know it's no excuse, so I don't make any. I haven't written or tried real hard to write anything in far too long, and I kind of abandoned a lot of readers, and for that I apologize.

So now that I have found this again I need to see where it all stands. I've found all my old chapters and notes. I've got no more written that I did - holy crap it's been four years - four years ago. I don't _entirely_ remember where I was going, sad as that is to admit, although with my notes all scraped together I'm pulling back together the general idea. And I want to write again.

What I need to know is will I have readers. Does anyone still care about this story, or should I just leave it and start an entirely new project. I'm behind on Clone Wars - two seasons behind, and I hear I've missed some important developments. This has become even more AU than it was when I started and while that happens with fanfics, is the interest still going to be there if I pick it back up.

The way I see it I've got three options. I could pick the story back up from where I left off, and run with it from there, with my old notes and ideas and all. Or, I could start it all over, once I've seen more of the series or just in general from an arbitrary point, and see what changes. Arbitrary point probably little would except writing style, but from what I've heard, if I picked it up from, say, the end of this current season, it would change a _lot_. The third option would be to scrap the whole thing and just try and start up a new story entirely. I'm not sure that's what I want to do, but it's an option.

I'm not fishing for reviews. I've got a bunch of those, which is the reason I'm even considering re-working this and writing it again in the first place. I'm just looking for responses, opinions. PM me, e-mail me if you want (NightRaven713 ). Or don't; in the end I'll decide one way or another as I go through these notes and see how much I can salvage up. I just want to give anyone who would be interested in pitching in on my decision a chance to do so. Because I still get favourites pinging my email for this story, here and there, and it's that interest even so long after I vanished that makes me want to come back to it to begin with.

However it turns out, thanks to everyone who reads or read this story, everyone who put it on a favourite or author alert, and everyone who left a review. Anything I write is pointless if people out there don't read and enjoy it. Whether with Aurora or not, I hope to be back writing soon, and I hope I'll still get readers and enthusiastic and encouraging and helpful as I did with this story way back when it started.


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